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EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY 
VIGNETTES 


Eighteenth  Century 
Vignettes 

FIRST  SERIES 
BY 

AUSTIN    DOBSON 


*^Fattte  d'arckanges,  il  faut  aimer  des 
creatures  imparfaites  " 


NEW  YORK 

DODD.  MEAD  AND  COMPANY 

Publishers 


Copyright,  189S, 
By  Dodd,  Mead  and  Company. 

AH  rights  reserved. 


SSntbetgttn  iSwss: 
John  Wilson  and  Son,  Cambridge. 


TO 

HAMILTON   W,   MABIE, 

ARE   CORDIALLY   INSCRIBED. 


PREFACE 

TO   THE   FIRST   EDITION   OF   1892. 


"CIFTEEN  of  the  twenty  papers  comprised 
in  this  volume  appeared  in  the  New  York 
*  Christian  Union,'  at  the  suggestion  of  whose 
Editor  the  series  was  begun.  Only  one  of 
these  fifteen—  'The  Citizen  of  the  World'  — 
has  been  reprinted  in  England.  Of  the  five 
papers  remaining,  '  Old  Vauxhall  Gardens '  was 
published  in  '  Scribner's  Magazine;'  and  the 
other  four  in  the  '  Saturday  Review,'  *  Long- 
man's Magazine,'  the  *  National  Review,'  and 
the  '  Library'  respectively.  Where  permission 
to  reprint  was  required,  it  has  been  obtained ; 
and  is  hereby  gratefully  acknowledged. 

With  the  exception  of  the  last  two,  which 
are  more  general  in  character  than  the  rest, 
the  papers  are  chronologically  arranged.  They 
do  not  by  any  means  exhaust  the  original  list 
of  subjects  drawn  up  by  their  writer  for  the 


2  Prefatory  Note. 

kind  of  episodical  treatment  at  which  th'ey 
aim  ;  and  should  these  first  essays  find  a  pub- 
lic, it  is  not  impossible  that  they  may  be  followed 
by  a  further  collection. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGB 

Prologue       5 

Steele's  Letters 9 

Prior's  'Kitty' 19 

Spence's  'Anecdotes' 31 

Captain  Coram's  Charity 44 

•The  Female  Quixote' 55 

Fielding's  'Voyage  to  Lisbon* 68 

Hanway's  Travels 79 

A  Garret  in  Gough  Square 93 

Hogarth's  Sigismunda 104 

'The  Citizen  of  the  World' 115 

An  Old  London  Bookseller 125 

Gray's  Library 136 

The  New  Chesterfield ,    .    147 

A  Day  at  Strawberry  Hill 158 

Goldsmith's  Library 167 

In  Cowper's  Arbour 176 

The  Quaker  of  Art 189 

Bewick's  Tailpieces 200 

A  German  in  England 211 

Old  Vauxhall  Gardens 230 

Index      265 


AN   EPISTLE   TO   A  FRIEND 
(by  way  of  prologue). 

'Versate  .  .  . 
Quid  valeant  humeri.' 

TTOW  shall  a  "Writer  change  his  ways  ? 

■*■    Read  his  Reviewers'  blame,  not  praise. 
In  blame,  as  Boileau  said  of  old. 
The  truth  is  shadowed,  if  not  told. 

There  1  Let  that  row  of  stars  extend 
To  hide  the  faults  I  mean  to  mend. 
Why  should  the  Public  need  to  know 
The  standard  that  I  fall  below  ? 
Or  learn  to  search  for  that  defect 
My  Critic  bids  me  to  correct  ? 
No:  in  this  case  the  Worldly- Wise 
Keep  their  own  counsel — and  revise. 

Yet  something  of  my  Point  of  View 
I  may  confide,  my  Friend,  to  You. 
I  don't  pretend  to  paint  the  vast 
And  complex  picture  of  the  Past : 


An  Epistle  to  a  Friend. 

Not  mine  the  wars  of  humankind, 
'The  furious  troops  in  battle  join'd;  '* 
Not  mine  the  march,  the  counter-march. 
The  trumpets,  the  triumphal  arch. 
For  detail,  detail,  most  I  care 
(Ce  superflu,  si  ndcessaire  !) ; 
I  cultivate  a  private  bent 
For  episode,  for  incident; 
I  take  a  page  of  Some  One's  life, 
His  quarrel  with  his  friend,  his  wife, 
His  good  or  evil  hap  at  Court, 
*  His  habit  as  he  lived,'  his  sport, 
The  books  he  read,  the  trees  he  planted, 
The  dinners  that  he  ate  —  or  wanted  : 
As  much,  in  short,  as  one  may  hope 
To  cover  with  a  microscope. 

I  don't  taboo  a  touch  of  scandal. 
If  Gray  or  Walpole  hold  the  candle  ; 
Nor  do  I  use  a  lofty  tone 
"Where  faults  are  weaknesses  alone. 

In  studies  of  Life's  seamy  side 

I  own  I  take  no  special  pride ; 

The  Fleet,  the  round-house,  and  the  gibbets 

Are  not  among  my  prize  exhibits  ; 

1  Addison's  Campaign. 


An  Epistle  to  a  Friend.  7 

Nor  could  I,  if  I  would,  outdo 

"What  Fielding  wrote,  or  Hogarth  drew. 

Yet  much  I  love  to  arabesque 
What  Gautier  christened  a  'Grotesque'; 
To  take  his  oddities  and  '  lunes,' 
And  drape  them  neatly  with  festoons, 
Until,  at  length,  I  chance  to  get 
The  thing  I  designate  'Vignette.* 

To  sum  the  matter  then  :  —  My  aim 
Is  modest.     This  is  all  I  claim  : 
To  paint  a  part  and  not  the  whole, 
The  trappings  rather  than  the  soul. 

The  Evolution  of  the  Time, 

The  silent  Forces  fighting  Crime, 

The  Fetishes  that  fail,  and  pass. 

The  struggle  between  Class  and  Class, 

The  Wealth  still  adding  land  to  lands, 

The  Crown  that  falls,  the  Faith  that  stands  .  . . 

All  this  I  leave  to  abler  hands. 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  VIGNETTES. 


STEELE'S    LETTERS. 

/^N  the  19th  of  May,  1708,  Her  Majesty 
^-^  Queen  Anne  being  then  upon  the  throne  of 
Great  Britain  and  Ireland,  a  coach  with  two 
horses,  gaudy  rather  than  neat  in  its  appoint- 
ments, drew  up  at  the  door  of  my  Lord  Sunder- 
land's Office  in  Whitehall.  It  contained  a  lady 
about  thirty,  of  considerable  personal  attrac- 
tions, and  dressed  richly  in  cinnamon  satin.  She 
was  a  brunette,  with  a  rather  high  forehead,  the 
height  of  which  was  ingeniously  broken  by  two 
short  locks  upon  the  temples.  Moreover,  she 
had  distinctly  fine  eyes,  and  a  mouth  which,  in 
its  normal  state,  must  have  been  arch  and  pretty, 
but  was  now  drawn  down  at  the  corners  under 
the  influence  of  some  temporary  irritation.  As 
the  coach  stopped,  a  provincial-looking  servant 
promptly  alighted,  pulled  out  from  the  box-seat 
a  large  case  of  the  kind  used  for  preserving  the 


lo  Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

voluminous  periwigs  of  the  period,  and  subse- 
quently extracted  from  the  same  receptacle  a 
pair  of  shining  new  shoes  with  square  toes  and 
silver  buckles.  These,  with  the  case,  he  car- 
ried carefully  into  the  house,  returning  shortly 
afterwards.  Then  ensued  what,  upon  the  stage, 
would  be  called  'an  interval,'  during  which  time 
the  high  forehead  of  the  lady  began  to  cloud 
visibly  with  impatience,  and  the  corners  of  her 
mouth  to  grow  more  ominous.  At  length,  about 
twenty  minutes  later,  came  a  sound  of  laughter 
and  noisy  voices  ;  and  by-and-by  bustled  out  of 
the  Cockpit  portal  a  square-shouldered,  square- 
faced  man  in  a  rich  dress,  which,  like  the  coach, 
was  a  little  showy.  He  wore  a  huge  black  full- 
bottomed  periwig.  Speaking  with  a  marked 
Irish  accent,  he  made  profuse  apologies  to  the 
occupant  of  the  carriage  —  apologies  which,  as 
might  be  expected,  were  not  well  received.  An 
expression  of  vexation  came  over  his  good-tem- 
pered face  as  he  took  his  seat  at  the  lady's  side, 
and  he  lapsed  for  a  few  minutes  into  a  moody 
silence.  But  before  they  had  gone  many  yards, 
his  dark,  deep-set  eyes  began  to  twinkle  once 
more  as  he  looked  about  him.  When  they 
passed  the  Tilt- Yard,  a  detachment  of  the 
Second  Troop  of  Life  Guards,  magnificent  in 
their  laced  red   coats,  jack  boots,  and  white 


Steele's  Letters.  ii 

feathers,  came  pacing  out  on  their  black  horses. 
They  took  their  way  towards  Charing  Cross, 
and  for  a  short  distance  followed  the  same 
route  as  the  chariot.  The  lady  was  loftily  indif- 
ferent to  their  presence  ;  and  she  was,  besides, 
on  the  farther  side  of  the  vehicle.  But  her 
companion  manifestly  recognized  some  old  ac- 
quaintances among  them,  and  was  highly  grati- 
fied at  being  recognized  in  his  turn,  although  at 
the  same  time  it  was  evident  he  was  also  a  little 
apprehensive  lest  the  '  Gentlemen  of  the  Guard,' 
as  they  were  called,  should  be  needlessly  de- 
monstrative in  their  acknowledgment  of  his  ex- 
istence. After  this,  nothing  more  of  moment 
occurred.  Slowly  mounting  St.  James's  Street, 
the  coach  turned  down  Piccadilly,  and,  passing 
between  the  groups  of  lounging  lackeys  at  the 
gate,  entered  Hyde  Park.  Here,  by  the  time 
it  had  once  made  the  circuit  of  the  Ring,  the 
lady's  equanimity  was  completely  restored,  and 
the  gentleman  was  radiant.  He  was,  in  truth, 
to  use  his  own  words,  '  no  undelightful  Com- 
panion.' He  possessed  an  infinite  fund  of  wit 
and  humour ;  and  his  manner  to  women  had  a 
sincerity  of  deference  which  was  not  the  pre- 
vailing characteristic  of  his  age. 

There  is  but   slender  invention  in   this  little 
picture.     The  gentleman  was   Captain    Steele, 


12  Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes, 

late  of  the  Life  Guards,  the  Coldstreams,  and 
Lucas's  regiment  of  foot,  now  Gazetteer  and 
Gentleman  Waiter  to  Queen  Anne's  consort, 
Prince  George  of  Denmark,  and  not  yet  *  Mr. 
Isaac  Bickerstaff'  of  the  immortal  '  Tatler.' 
The  lady  was  Mrs.  Steele,  tide  Miss  Mary  Scur- 
lock,  his  '  Ruler '  and  '  absolute  Governesse  ' 
(as  he  called  her),  to  whom  he  had  been  married 
some  eight  months  before.  If  you  ask  at  the 
British  Museum  for  the  Steele  manuscripts 
(Add.  MSB.  5,145  A,  B,  and  C),  the  courteous 
attendant  will  bring  you,  with  its  faded  ink, 
dusky  paper,  and  hasty  scrawl,  the  very  letter 
making  arrangements  for  this  meeting  ('  best 
Periwigg '  and  '  new  Shoes '  included),  at  the 
end  of  which  the  writer  assures  his  '  dear  Prue ' 
(another  pet  name)  that  she  is  *  Vitall  Life  to 
Y'  Oblig'd  Affectionate  Husband  &  Humble 
Ser"'  Rich"^  Steele.'  There  are  many  such  in 
the  quarto  volume  of  which  this  forms  part, 
written  from  all  places,  at  all  times,  in  all  kinds 
of  hands.  They  take  all  tones  ;  they  are  pas- 
sionate, tender,  expostulatory,  playful,  dignified, 
lyric,  didactic.  It  must  be  confessed  that  from 
a  perusal  of  them  one's  feeling  for  the  lady  of 
the  chariot  is  not  entirely  unsympathetic.  It 
can  scarcely  have  been  an  ideal  household,  that 
•  third  door  right  hand  turning  out  of  Jermyn 


Steele's  Letters.  13 

Street,'  to  which  so  many  of  them  are  ad- 
dressed ;  and  Mrs.  Steele  must  frequently  have 
had  to  complain  to  her  confidante,  Mrs.  (or 
Miss)  Binns  (a  lady  whom  Steele  is  obviously 
anxious  to  conciliate),  of  the  extraordinary  irre- 
gularity of  her  restless  lord  and  master.  Now 
a  friend  from  Barbados  has  stopped  him  on  his 
way  home,  and  he  will  come  (he  writes)  *  within 
a  Pint  of  Wine  ; '  now  it  is  Lord  Sunderland 
who  is  keeping  him  indefinitely  at  the  Council ; 
now  the  siege  of  Lille  and  the  proofs  of  the 
*  Gazette  '  will  detain  him  until  ten  at  night. 
Sometimes  his  vague  'West  Indian  business' 
(that  is,  his  first  wife's  property)  hurries  him 
suddenly  into  the  City  ;  sometimes  he  is  borne 
off  to  the  Gentlemen  Ushers'  table  at  St. 
James's.  Sometimes,  even,  he  stays  out  all 
night,  as  he  had  done  not  many  days  before  the 
date  of  the  above  meeting,  when  he  had  written 
to  beg  that  his  dressing-gown,  his  slippers,  and 
'  clean  Linnen '  might  be  sent  to  him  at  *  one 
Legg's,'  a  barber  '  over  against  the  Devill  Tavern 
at  Charing  Crosse,'  where  he  proposes  to  lie  that 
night,  chiefly,  it  has  been  conjectured  from  the 
context,  in  order  to  escape  certain  watchful 
'  shoulder-dabbers '  who  were  hanging  obsti- 
nately about  his  own  mansion  in  St.  James's. 
For  —  to  tell  the  truth  —  he  was  generally  hope- 


14  Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

lessly  embarrassed,  and  scarcely  ever  without 
a  lawsuit  on  his  hands.  He  was  not  a  bad  man  ; 
he  was  not  necessarily  vicious  or  dissolute.  But 
his  habits  were  incurably  generous,  profuse,  and 
improvident ;  and  his  sanguine  Irish  nature  led 
him  continually  to  mistake  his  expectations  for 
his  income.  Naturally,  perhaps,  his  '  absolute 
Governesse  '  complained  of  an  absolutism  so 
strangely  limited.  If  her  affection  for  him  was 
scarcely  as  ardent  as  his  passion  for  her,  it  was 
still  a  genuine  emotion.  But  to  a  coquette  of 
some  years'  standing,  and  *  a  cried-up  beauty ' 
(as  Mrs.  Manley  calls  her),  the  realities  of  her 
married  life  must  have  been  a  cruel  disappoint- 
ment ;  and  she  was  not  the  woman  to  conceal 
it.  '  I  wish,'  says  her  husband  in  one  of  his 
letters,  '  I  knew  how  to  Court  you  into  Good 
Humour,  for  Two  or  Three  Quarrells  more  will 
dispatch  me  quite.'  Of  her  replies  we  have  no 
knowledge ;  but  from  scattered  specimens  of 
her  style  when  angry,  they  must  often  have  been 
exceptionally  scornful  and  unconciliatory.  On 
one  occasion,  where  he  addresses  her  as 
'  Madam,'  and  returns  her  note  to  her  in  order 
that  she  may  see,  upon  second  thoughts,  the 
disrespectful  manner  in  which  she  treats  him, 
he  is  evidently  deeply  wounded.  She  has  said 
that  their  dispute  is  far  from  being  a  trouble  to 


Steele's  Letters.  15 

her,  and  he  rejoins  that  to  him  any  disturbance 
between  them  is  the  greatest  affliction  imagi- 
nable. And  then  he  goes  on  to  expostulate,  with 
more  dignity  than  usual,  against  her  unreason- 
able use  of  her  prerogative.  *  I  Love  you,'  he 
says,  '  better  than  the  light  of  my  Eyes,  or  the 
life-blood  in  my  Heart  but  when  I  have  lett 
you  know  that,  you  are  also  to  understand  that 
neither  my  sight  shall  be  so  far  inchanted,  or  my 
affection  so  much  master  of  me  as  to  make  me 
forgett  our  common  Interest.  To  attend  my 
businesse  as  I  ought  and  improve  my  fortune 
it  is  necessary  that  my  time  and  my  "Will  should 
be  under  no  direction  but  my  own.'  Clearly 
his  bosom's  queen  had  been  inquiring  too 
closely  into  his  goings  and  comings.  It  is  a 
strange  thing,  he  says,  in  another  letter,  that, 
because  she  is  handsome,  he  must  be  always 
giving  her  an  account  of  every  trifle,  and  minute 
of  his  time.  And  again  —  '  Dear  Prue,  do  not 
send  after  me,  for  I  shall  be  ridiculous ! '  It 
had  happened  to  him,  no  doubt.  '  He  is  gov- 
erned by  his  wife  most  abominably,  as  bad  as 
Marlborough,'  says  another  contemporary  letter- 
writer.  And  we  may  fancy  the  blue  eyes  of 
Dr.  Swift  flashing  unutterable  scorn  as  he 
scribbles  off  this  piece  of  intelligence  to  Stella 
and  Mrs.  Dingley. 


1 6  Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

In  the  letters  which  follow  Steele's  above- 
quoted  expostulation,  the  embers  of  misunder- 
standing flame  and  fade,  to  flame  and  fade  again. 
A  word  or  two  of  kindness  makes  him  raptur- 
ous ;  a  harsh  expression  sinks  him  to  despair. 
As  time  goes  on,  the  letters  grow  fewer,  and  the 
writers  grow  more  used  to  each  other's  ways. 
But  to  the  last  Steele's  affectionate  nature  takes 
fire  upon  the  least  encouragement.  Once,  years 
afterwards,  when  Prue  is  in  the  country  and  he 
is  in  London,  and  she  calls  him  '  Good  Dick,'  it 
throws  him  into  such  a  transport  that  he  de- 
clares he  could  forget  his  gout,  and  walk  down 
to  her  at  Wales.  '  My  dear  little  peevish, 
beautiful,  wise  Governess,  God  bless  you,'  the 
letter  ends.  In  another  he  assures  her  that, 
lying  in  her  place  and  on  her  pillow,  he  fell 
into  tears  from  thinking  that  his  '  charming  little 
insolent  might  be  then  awake  and  in  pain '  with 
headache.  She  wants  flattery,  she  says,  and  he 
flatters  her.  *  Her  son,'  he  declares,  '  is  ex- 
tremely pretty,  and  has  his  face  sweetened  with 
something  of  the  Venus  his  mother,  which  is  no 
small  delight  to  the  Vulcan  who  begot  him.' 
He  assures  her  that,  though  she  talks  of  the 
children,  they  are  dear  to  him  more  because 
they  are  hers  than  because  they  are  his  own.* 

^  A  few  sentences  in  this  paper  are  borrowed  from  the 
writer's  '  Life  of  Steele,  1886.' 


Steele's  Letters.  17 

And  this  reminds  us  that  some  of  the  best  of 
his  later  letters  are  about  his  family.  Once,  at 
this  time  of  their  mother's  absence  in  Wales, 
he  says  that  he  has  invited  his  eldest  daughter 
to  dinner  with  one  of  her  teachers,  because  she 
had  represented  to  him  '  in  her  pretty  language 
that  she  seemed  helpless  and  friendless,  without 
anybody's  taking  notice  of  her  at  Christmas,  when 
all  the  children  but  she  and  two  more  were  with 
their  relations.'  So  now  they  are  in  the  room 
where  he  is  writing.  '  I  told  Betty,'  he  adds, 
'  I  had  writ  to  you  ;  and  she  made  me  open  the 
letter  again,  and  give  her  humble  duty  to  her 
mother,  and  desire  to  know  when  she  shall  have 
the  honour  to  see  her  in  town.'  No  doubt  this 
was  in  strict  accordance  with  the  proprieties  as 
practised  at  Mrs.  Nazereau's  polite  academy 
in  Chelsea  ;  but  somehow  one  suspects  that 
'  Madam  Betty'  would  scarcely  have  addressed 
the  writer  of  the  letter  with  the  same  boarding- 
school  formality.  Elsewhere  the  talk  is  all  of 
Eugene,  the  eldest  boy.  '  Your  son,  at  the 
present  writing,  is  mighty  well  employed  in 
tumbling  on  the  floor  of  the  room  and  sweeping 
the  sand  with  a  feather.  He  grows  a  most 
delightful  child,  and  very  full  of  play  and  spirit. 
He  is  also  a  very  great  scholar:  he  can  read 
his   Primer ;    and    I   have   brought  down    my 


i8  Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

Virgil.  He  makes  most  shrewd  remarks  upon 
the  pictures.  We  are  very  intimate  friends  and 
play-fellows.'  Yes  :  decidedly  Steele's  children 
must  have  loved  their  clever,  faulty,  kindly 
father. 


PRIOR'S  '  KITTY/ 

TN  the  year  1718,  and  presumably  after  Mr. 
■*■  Matthew  Prior  had  already  printed  his  tall 
and  extremely  miscellaneous  folio  of  *  Poems 
on  Several  Occasions,'  there  was  published 
separately  a  little  jeu  d^ esprit  by  the  same  '  emi- 
nent Hand,'  which  has  not  been  regarded  as 
the  least  fortunate  of  his  efforts.  In  its  first 
fugitive  form,  now  so  rare  as  to  be  known  only 
to  a  few  highly-favoured  collectors,  it  is  a  single 
page  or  leaf  of  eight  quatrains  ;  and  of  this  there 
are  two  issues,  both  attributing  the  verses  to 
Prior,  both  claiming  to  be  authentic,  both  un- 
authorized. The  earlier,  which  is  dated,  is 
headed  *  Upon  Lady  Katherine  H — des  first 
appearing  at  the  Play-House  in  Drury-Lane ; ' 
the  other,  '  from  Curll's  chaste  press,'  bears  the 
title  of  '  The  Female  Phaeton,'  by  which  the 
piece  is  now  known.  The  person  indicated 
was  the  second  daughter  of  Henry  Hyde,  Earl 
of  Clarendon  and  Rochester,  and  the  grandchild 
of  the  great  Lord  Chancellor  and  historian  of 


20         Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

the  Rebellion.  As  she  was  born  in  1700,  she 
must  at  this  time  have  been  eighteen.  She  was 
'  beautiful/  says  the  poet ;  '  she  was  wild  as 
Colt  untam'd  ; '  she  was,  besides, 

'  Inflam'd  with  Rage  at  sad  Restraint, 
Which  wise  Mamma  ordain'd.' 

Her  elder  sister,  Jane  —  the  'blooming  Hide, 
with  Eyes  so  rare,'  of  whom  John  Gay  had  sung 
in  the  '  Prologue  '  to  '  The  Shepherd's  Week ' 
—  was  already  married  to  the  Earl  of  Essex. 
"Why  should  not  She,  too,  be  a  Toast,  and 
*  bring  home  Hearts  by  Dozens  '  ? 

'  Dearest  Mamma,  for  once  let  me, 
Unchain'd,  my  Fortune  try ; 
I  '11  have  my  Earl,  as  well  as  She, 
Or  know  the  Reason  why.' 

And  so  the  stanzas,  eternally  human  and  there- 
fore eternally  modern,  dance  and  sparkle  to 
their  natural  ending : 

'  Fondness  prevail'd,  Mamma  gave  way ; 

Kitty,  at  Heart's  Desire, 
Obtains  the  Chariot  for  a  Day, 
And  set  the  World  on  Fire.' 

Apart  from   the    reference  to    Drury    Lane 
Theatre  supplied  by  the  title,  there  is  no  clue 


Prior's  'Kitty.'  21 

to  the  mcident  recorded.  But  two  years  after 
Prior  wrote  these  playful  verses,  which  were 
sent  to  the  lady  through  Mr.  Harcourt,  Cathe- 
rine Hyde  verified  her  poet's  words  by  securing 
a  suitor  of  even  higher  rank  than  her  sister's 
husband.  In  March,  1720,  she  married  Charles 
Douglas,  third  Dulce  of  Queensberry,  an  ami- 
able and  accomplished  nobleman,  who,  it  has 
been  hinted,  must  sometimes  have  been  con- 
siderably '  exercised '  by  the  vagaries  of  the 
charming  but  impetuous  '  child  of  Nature ' 
whom  he  had  selected  for  his  helpmate.  In- 
deed, despite  her  ability,  many  of  her  less 
sympathetic  contemporaries  did  not  scruple  to 
suggest  that  her  Grace's  eccentricities  almost 
amounted  to  a  touch  of  insanity.  Bolingbroke 
called  her  '  Sa  SinguUritd ;  '  Walpole  spoke  of 
her  roundly  as  '  an  out-pensioner  of  Bedlam.' 
But  neither  the  Abbot  of  Strawberry  nor  Pope's 
'  guide,  philosopher,  and  friend '  had  any  right 
to  set  up  for  a  Forbes-Winslow  or  a  Brouardel ; 
and  there  is  in  reality  little  more  in  what  is  re- 
lated of  her  than  might  be  expected  of  one  who, 
at  once  a  spoiled  child,  a  beauty,  and  a  woman 
of  parts,  deliberately  revolted  against  the  tyran- 
nous conventionalities  of  her  time.  To  the  last 
she  persistently  declined,  as  she  told  Swift,  to 
"  cut  and  curl  her  hair  like  a  sheep's  head,"  in 


22  Eighteenth  Century  Fignettes. 

accordance  with  the  reigning  fashion ;  and  she  af- 
fected in  her  dress  a  simplicity  and  youthfulness 
which  nothing  but  the  good  looks  she  contrived 
to  retain  so  long,  could  possibly  have  justified. 
She  had  a  fancy  for  idyllic  travesties,  appearing 
now  as  a  shepherdess,  now  as  a  peasant,  now 
as  a  milkmaid.^  Upon  one  occasion  she  scan- 
dalized the  court-usher  soul  of  Horace  Walpole 
by  masquerading  at  St.  James's  in  a  costume  of 
red  flannel.  As  a  rule,  she  carried  her  innova- 
tions triumphantly ;  but  now  and  then  she  was 
forced  to  yield  to  a  will  more  imperative  than 
her  own.  Once  the  fantastic  old  King  of  Bath 
tore  off  her  favourite  white  apron  in  the  Pump 
Room,    flinging  it  contemptuously   among  the 

*  waiting  gentlewomen  '  in  the  hinder  benches. 

*  None  but  abigails  wore  white  aprons,'  he  de- 
clared ;  and  the  grande  dame  de  par  le  monde 
made  a  virtue  of  a  necessity,  and  submitted.  In 
her  own  entertainments,  however,  she  seems  to 
have  been  as  despotic  as  Nash,  insisting  that 
people  should  come  early  and  leave  early,  and 
declining  to  provide  the  profuse  refreshments 
then  expected.  High-spirited  and  whimsical  no 
doubt  she  was  ;  but  the  stories  told  of  her  are 

1  In  this  last  character  Charles  Jervas  painted  her. 
The  picture  is  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery.  She 
has  hazel  eyes  and  dark-brown  hair. 


Prior's  'Kitty.'  23 

probably  exaggerated.  Those  who  praise  her, 
praise  her  unreservedly.  Her  character  was 
unblemished.  She  was  truthful  ;  she  was 
honest ;  she  was  not  a  flatterer.  And  she 
was  certainly  fearless,  for  she  dared,  even  in 
the  rudimentary  epoch  of  the  two-pronged  fork, 
to  rally  the  terrible  Dean  of  St.  Patrick's  for 
that  deplorable  habit  —  so  justly  deprecated  by 
the  Historian  of  Snobs  —  of  putting  his  knife  in 
his  mouth.  When  she  saw  any  one  *  administer 
the  cold  steel,'  as  Thackeray  calls  it,  she  would 
shriek  out  in  affected  terror  lest  they  should  do 
themselves  a  mischief.  She  seems,  although 
they  never  really  met  after  her  girlhood,  to  have 
wholly  subjugated  Swift,  whose  final  tone  to 
her  com.es  perilously  close  to  that  fulsome  adu- 
lation which,  in  others,  stirred  his  fiercest  scorn. 
'  I  will  excuse  your  blots  upon  paper,'  he  says, 
writing  to  her  after  Gay's  death,  '  because  they 
are  the  only  blots  you  ever  did,  or  ever  will 
make,  in  the  whole  course  of  your  life.'  Further 
on  he  refers  '  to  the  universal,  almost  idolatrous 
esteem  you  have  forced  from  every  person  in 
two  kingdoms,  who  have  the  least  regard  for 
virtue.'  It  is  her  peculiar  art,  he  tells  her  again, 
to  bribe  '  all  wise  and  good  men  to  be  her  flat- 
terers.' Swift  was  no  paragon  ;  but  the  praise 
of  Swift  outweighs  the  sneers  of  Walpole. 


24  Eighteenth  Century  Fignettes. 

She  was  the  friend  of  men  of  letters  —  this 
capricious  great  lady,  and  they  have  judged  her 
best.  To  Swift  in  particular  it  was  an  attrac- 
tion that  she  loved  and  befriended  his  favourite 
Gay.  The  earlier  part  of  the  brief  correspond- 
ence from  which  the  above  quotation  is  bor- 
rowed, shows  the  Duchess  in  her  most  amiable 
light ;  and  it  was  with  Gay  that  it  originated. 
From  the  days  of  her  marriage  she  had  protected 
and  petted  that  fat  and  feckless  fabulist ;  she 
had  championed  him  in  the  matter  of  his  second 
ballad-opera  in  such  a  way  as  to  procure  her 
own  exile  from  Court ;  and  at  the  time  she  be- 
gan to  write  to  Swift,  Gay  was  domiciled  at  the 
Duke's  country  house  at  Ambresbury,  or  Ames- 
bury,  near  Salisbury,  in  Wiltshire.  Gay  begins 
by  sending  Swift  the  Duchess's  '  services,'  and 
by  wishing  on  his  own  account  that  Swift  could 
come  to  England, — could  come  to  Amesbury. 
Swift  replies  with  conventional  acknowledgment 
of  the  civility  of  the  lady,  whom  he  had  not  seen 
since  she  was  a  girl.  He  hears  an  ill  thing  of 
her,  he  says  —  that  she  is  matre  pulchrd  filia 
pulchrior,  and  he  would  be  angry  she  should  ex- 
cel her  mother  (Jane  Leveson  Gower),  who,  of 
old,  had  long  been  his  *  principal  goddess.'  In 
the  letter  that  succeeds,  the  Duchess  herself 
adds  a  postscript  to  confirm  Gay's   invitation. 


Prior's  'Kitty.'  25 

•  I  would  fain  have  you  come,'  she  writes.  *  I 
can't  say  you  '11  be  welcome  ;  for  I  don't  know 
you,  and  perhaps  I  shall  not  like  you  ;  but  if  I 
do  not  (unless  you  are  a  very  vain  person),  you 
shall  know  my  thoughts  as  soon  as  I  do  myself.' 
No  mode  of  address  could  have  suited  Swift's 
humour  better  ;  and  part  of  his  next  epistle  to 
Gay  replies  to  her  challenge  in  the  true  Swiftian 
style.    He  begins  very  low  down  on  the  page  — 

*  as  a  mark  of  respect,  like  receiving  her  Grace 
at  the  bottom  of  the  stairs.'  He  goes  on  with 
a  protest  for  form's  sake  against  the  imperious 
manner  of  her  advances ;  but  he  argues  in- 
geniously that  she  must  like  him,  since  they  are 
both  unpopular  with  the  Queen.  If  he  comes, 
'  he  will,'  he  adds,  '  out  of  fear  and  prudence, 
appear  as  vain  as  he  can,  that  he  may  not  know 
her  thoughts  of  him.'  His  closing  sentences 
are  in  Malvolio's  manner.  '  This  is  your  own 
direction,  but  it  was  needless.  For  Diogenes 
himself  would  be  vain,  to  have  received  the 
honour  of  being  one  moment  of  his  life  in  the 
thoughts  of  your  grace.' 

After  this,  ks  dp^es  s'engagent.  As  to  the 
correspondence  that  ensued,  opinions  differ 
widely.  Warton  discovered  '  exquisite  humour 
and  pleasantry' in  Swift's  'affected  bluntness,' 
and  compares  him  to  Voiture,  — to  Waller  writ- 


26         Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

ing  of  Saccharissa  on  her  marriage.  Later 
editors  are  less  enthusiastic,  regarding  the  whole 
series  of  letters  as  '  empty,  laboured,  and  child- 
ish on  both  sides.'  Each  of  these  verdicts  is 
extreme.  Swift  tempering  candour  by  compli- 
ment, is  an  unusual  but  not  an  impossible  spec- 
tacle ;  while  the  Duchess  writes  exactly  as  one 
would  expect  her  to  write  with  Swift's  fast  friend 
at  her  elbow.  Gay,  knowing  that  she  will 
probably  follow  him,  warns  Swift  playfully  that 
she  has  her  antipathies,  —  that  she  likes  her  own 
way, — that  she  is  very  frank,  and  that  in  any 
dispute  he  must  take  her  side.  Thereupon 
her  Grace  takes  up  the  pen  herself : 

'  Write  I  must,  particularly  now,  as  I  have  an 
opportunity  to  indulge  my  predominant  passion 
of  contradiction.  I  do,  in  the  first  place,  con- 
tradict most  things  Mr.  Gay  says  of  me,  to  deter 
you  from  coming  here  ;  which  if  you  ever  do, 
I  hereby  assure  you,  that,  unless  I  like  my  own 
way  better,  you  shall  have  yours ;  and  in  all 
disputes  you  shall  convince  me,  if  you  can. 
But,  by  what  I  see  of  you,  this  is  not  a  misfor- 
tune, that  will  always  happen  ;  for  I  find  you  are 
a  great  mistaker.  For  example,  you  take  pru- 
dence for  imperiousness  :  't  is  from  this  first 
that  I  determined  not  to  like  one,  who  is  too 


Prior's  'Kitty.'  27 

giddy-headed  for  me  to  be  certain  whether  or 
no  I  shall  ever  be  acquainted  with  [him].  I 
have  known  people  take  great  delight  in  building 
castles  in  the  air  ;  but  I  should  choose  to  build 
friends  upon  a  more  solid  foundation.  I  would 
fain  know  you  ;  for  I  often  hear  more  good 
likable  things  [of  you]  than  't  is  possible  any 
one  can  deserve.  Pray,  come,  that  I  may  find 
out  something  wrong  ;  for  I,  and  I  believe  most 
women,  have  an  inconceivable  pleasure  to  find 
out  any  faults,  except  their  own.  Mr.  Gibber 
is  made  poet  laureat.^  I  am.  Sir,  as  much  your 
humble  servant  as  I  can  be  to  any  person  I 
don't  know. 

C.  Q. 
*  P.  S.  Mr.  Gay  is  very  peevish  that  I  spell 
and  write  ill ;  but  I  don't  care  :  for  neither  the 
pen  nor  I  can  do  better.  Besides,  I  think  you 
have  flattered  me,  and  such  people  ought  to  be 
put  to  trouble.' 

That  this  fashion  of  writing,  so  new  to  him, 
should  not  have  captivated  Swift,  is  impossible. 
He  could  not  accept  the  invitation ;  but  at  least 

1  '  Harmonious  Cibber  entertains 

The  Court  with  annual  Birth-day  Strains  ; 
Whence  Gay  was  banish'd  in  Disgrace.' 

Swift,  C«  Poetry:  a  Rhapsody ,  1733 


28  Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

he  could  prolong  the  correspondence.  In  his 
next  letter  he  enters  upon  preliminaries.  He  is 
old,  dull,  peevish,  perverse,  morose.  Has  she 
a  clear  voice  ?  —  and  will  she  let  him  sit  at  her 
left  hand,  for  his  right  ear  is  the  better  ?  Can 
the  parson  of  the  parish  play  at  backgammon, 
and  hold  his  tongue  ?  Has  she  a  good  nurse 
among  her  women,  in  case  he  should  fancy  him- 
self sick  ?  How  long  will  she  maintain  him  and 
his  equipage  if  he  comes  ?  A  week  or  two  later, 
in  the  form  of  another  postscript  to  Gay,  follows 
the  reply  of  the  Duchess  : 

'  It  was  Mr.  Gay's  fault  that  I  did  not  write 
sooner ;  which  if  I  had,  I  should  hope  you 
would  have  been  here  by  this  time  ;  for  I  have 
to  tell  you,  all  your  articles  are  agreed  to  ;  and 
that  I  only  love  my  own  way,  when  I  meet  not 
v/ith  others  whose  ways  I  like  better.  I  am  in 
great  hopes  that  I  shall  approve  of  yours  ;  for 
to  tell  you  the  truth,  I  am  at  present  a  little 
tired  of  my  ov/n.  I  have  not  a  clear  or  distinct 
voice,  except  when  I  am  angry  ;  but  I  am  a 
very  good  nurse,  when  people  don't  fancy 
themselves  sick.  Mr.  Gay  knows  this  ;  and 
he  knows  too  how  to  play  at  backgammon. 
Whether  the  parson  of  the  parish  can,  I  know 
not ;  but  if  he  cannot  hold  his  tongue,   I  can. 


Prior's  'Kitty.'  29 

Pray  set  out  the  first  fair  wind,  and  stay  with 
us  as  long  as  ever  you  please.  I  cannot  name 
my  fixed  time,  that  I  shall  like  to  maintain  you 
and  your  equipage  ;  but  if  I  don't  happen  to 
like  you,  I  know  I  can  so  far  govern  my  temper 
as  jto  endure  you  for  about  five  days.  So  come 
away  directly  ;  at  all  hazards  you  '11  be  allowed 
a  good  breathing  time.  I  shall  make  no  sort  of 
respectful  conclusions  ;  for  till  I  know  you,  I 
cannot  tell  what  I  am  to  you.' 

And  so  the  correspondence,  always  conducted 
on  the  one  side  by  Gay  and  his  kind  protectress, 
or  Gay  and  the  Duke,  protracts  itself  until  ar- 
rives to  Swift  that  fatal  missive  from  Pope  and 
Arbuthnot  announcing  Gay's  sudden  death,  —  a 
missive  which,  overmastered  by  a  foreboding  of 
its  contents,  he  kept  unopened  for  days.  At  a 
later  date  some  further  communications  followed 
between  Swift  and  the  Duchess.  But  he  liked 
best  her  postscripts  to  his  dead  friend's  letters. 
'  They  made  up,'  he  told  Pope  unaffectedly, 
'  a  great  part  of  the  little  happiness  I  could  have 
here.' 

Swift  survived  Gay  for  nearly  fifteen  years, 
and  the  Duchess  lived  far  into  the  reign  of 
George  the  Third.  In  the  changing  procession 
of  Walpole's  pages  one  gets  glimpses  of  her  from 


30         Eighleentb  Century  P^ignettes. 

time  to  time,  generally  emphasised  by  some 
malicious  anecdote  or  epithet.  At  the  corona- 
tion she  returned  to  Court,  appearing  with  per- 
fectly white  hair.  Yet,  four  years  before  her 
death,  Walpole  says  of  her  that  (by  twilight) 
you  would  *  sooner  take  her  for  a  young  beauty 
of  an  old-fashioned  century  than  for  an  anti- 
quated goddess  of  this  age.'  Indeed  her  all- 
conquering  charms  seduced  him  into  panegyric  ; 
and  one  day  in  1771,  she  found  these  verses  on 
her  toilet-table,  wrung  from  her  most  persistent 
detractor : 

'  To  many  a  Kitty,  Love  his  car 
Will  for  a  day  engage, 
But  Prior's  Kitty,  ever  fair. 
Obtained  it  for  an  age  I ' 

She  was  then  seventy-one.  In  later  life  she 
was  often  at  her  seat  of  Drumlanrig,  in  Dum- 
friesshire ;  and  Scott  in  his  *  Journal,'  under 
date  of  August,  1826,  speaks  of  the  *  Walk  '  by 
the  river  Nith  which  she  had  formed,  and  which 
still  went  by  her  name.  Her  peculiarities,  over 
which  her  friend  Mrs.  Delany  sighs  plaintively, 
.did  not  abate  with  age  ;  but  her  kind  heart  re- 
mained. She  died  in  Savile  Row  in  1777, 
of  a  surfeit  of  cherries,  and  was  buried  at 
Durrisdeer. 


SPENCE'S    'ANECDOTES.' 

TTTHEN,  in  the  year  1741,  after  his  quarrel 
'^  with  Gray,  Horace  Waipole  lay  sick  of 
a  quinsy  at  Reggio,  the  shearing  of  his  thin-spun 
life  was  only  postponed  by  the  opportune  inter- 
vention of  a  passing  acquaintance.  The  Rev. 
Joseph  Spence,  Fellow  of  New  College,  Oxford, 
and  Professor  of  Poetry  to  that  University,  then 
travelling  in  Italy  as  Governor  to  Henry  Clinton, 
Earl  of  Lincoln,  promptly  arrived  to  his  aid, 
summoned  Dr.  Cocchi  post-haste  from  Florence, 
and  thus  became  instrumental  in  enabling  the 
Prince  of  Letter-Writers  to  expand  the  thirty  or 
forty  epistles  he  had  already  produced  into  that 
magnificent  correspondence  which,  incomplete 
even  now,  extends  to  nine  closely  printed  vol- 
umes. Spence,  to  whom  all  Walpole's  admirers 
owe  a  lasting  debt  of  gratitude,  was  one  of  the 
fortunate  men  of  a  fortunate  literary  age.  In 
1726  he  had  published  a  '  genteel '  critique  of 
Pope's  *  Odyssey,'  conspicuous  for  its  courte- 
ous mingling  of  praise  and  blame,  and  not  the 
less  grateful  to  the  person  criticised  because  -— 


32  Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

as  Bennet  Langton  said,  and  as  good  luck  would 
have  it  —  ten  out  of  the  twelve  objections  fell 
upon  the  labours  of  Pope's  luckless  coadjutors, 
Broome  and  Fenton.  The  book  made  Pope 
his  friend,  and  himself  Professor  of  Poetry,  in 
which  capacity  he  patronised  Thomson,  and  pro- 
tected Queen  Caroline's  thresher-laureate,  Ste- 
phen Duck.  During  the  continental  tours  which 
he  undertook  in  1730  and  1737,  and  in  that  above 
referred  to,  he  collected  the  material  for  his 
'  Polymetis,'  a  tall /o/io  on  classical  mythology, 
the  earlier  editions  of  which  are  now  chiefly 
sought  after  for  their  irreverent  vignette  of  Dr. 
Cooke,  propositor  of  Eton,  in  the  disguise  of  '  an 
ass's  nowl.'  Spence  continued  to  dally  lightly 
with  letters,  editing  Sackville's  '  Gorboduc,' 
annotating  Virgil,  writing  a  life  of  the  blind  poet 
Blacklock,  and  comparing  (after  the  manner  of 
Plutarch),  for  Walpole's  private  press  at  Straw- 
berry, Mr.  Robert  Hill,  the  'learned  tailor' 
of  Buckingham,  with  that  Florentine  helluo  libro- 
rum,  Signor  Antonio  Magliabecchi.  He  lived 
the  mildly  studious  life  of  a  quiet,  easy-going 
clergyman  of  the  eighteenth  century,  nursing  a 
widowed  mother  like  Pope,  and  declining  to 
disturb  the  placid  ripple  of  his  days  by  the 
'  violent  delights  '  of  matrimony.  He  is  '  the 
completest    scholar,'   '  the    sweetest    tempered 


Spence's  'Anecdotes.'  33 

gentleman  breathing,'  cries  his  enthusiastic 
friend,  Mr.  Christopher  Pitt,  himself  a  virtuoso 
and  a  translator  of  Homer.  He  is  'extremely 
polite,  friendly,  cheerful,  and  master  of  an  infi- 
nite fund  of  subjects  for  agreeable  conversa- 
tion,' says  Mr.  Shenstone  of  the  Leasowes. 
•  He  was  a  good-natured,  harmless  little  soul, 
but  more  like  a  silver  penny  than  a  genius,' 
says  ungrateful  Mr.  Walpole.  '  He  was  a  poor 
creature,  though  a  very  worthy  man,'  says 
clever  Mr.  Cambridge  of  the  'World 'and  the 
'  Scribleriad.'  To  strike  an  average  between 
these  varying  estimates  is  not  a  difficult  task.  It 
gives  us  a  character  amiable  rather  than  strong, 
finical  rather  than  earnest,  well-informed  and 
ingenious  rather  than  positively  learned.  For 
the  rest,  '  Polymetis '  has  been  supplanted  by 
Lempriere,  and  is  as  dead  as  Stephen  Duck ; 
and  its  author  now  lives  mainly  by  the  '  priefs ' 
which,  like  Sir  Hugh  Evans,  he  made  in  his  note- 
book, —  in  other  words,  by  the  Anecdotes  of  the 
Literary  Men  of  his  age,  which,  when  occasion 
offered,  he  jotted  down  from  the  conversation  of 
Pope,  Young,  Dean  Lockier,  and  other  notabili- 
ties into  whose  company  he  came  from  time  to 
time. 

The  story  of  Spence's  '  Anecdotes '  is  a  che- 
quered one.     At  their  author's  death  they  were 
3 


34         Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

still  in  manuscript,  though  their  existence  was 
an  open  secret.  Joseph  Warton  had  hand- 
selled them  for  his  '  Essay  on  Pope  ; '  and  War- 
burton  had  used  them  for  Ruffhead's  '  Life.' 
When  Spence  died  in  1768,  it  was  discovered 
that  he  had  himself  intended  to  print  them,  — 
that  he  had,  in  fact,  conditionally  sold  a  selec- 
tion of  them  to  Robert  Dodsley,  the  bookseller 
(whom  he  had  formerly  befriended),  for  a  hun- 
dred pounds.  But  before  publication  was  fi- 
nally arranged  both  Spence  and  Robert  Dodsley 
died.  Spence's  executors — Bishop  Lowth,  Dr. 
Ridley  and  Mr.  Rolle  —  thought  suppression 
for  a  time  desirable  ;  and  the  surviving  Dodsley, 
James,  although,  says  Joseph  Warton,  '  he  prob- 
ably would  have  gained  400/.  or  500/.  by  it,'  was 
easily  prevailed  upon,  out  of  regard  for  Spence, 
to  relinquish  the  bargain.  The  manuscript  selec- 
tion was  then  presented  by  the  executors  to 
Spence's  old  pupil.  Lord  Lincoln,  who  had  be- 
come Duke  of  Newcastle,  while  the  original 
'Anecdotes,'  and  a  fair  copy,  remained  in  Bishop 
Lowth's  possession.  The  Newcastle  MS.  was 
lent  to  Johnson,  who  employed  it  for  his  '  Lives 
of  the  Poets,'  giving  great  offence  to  the  Duke 
by  acknowledging  the  loan  without  mentioning 
the  name  of  the  lender  ;  and  Malone  had  access 
to  it  for  his  Dryden,  at  the  same  time  compiling 


Spence's  'Anecdotes.'  35 

from  It  a  smaller  selection,  which  he  annotated 
briefly.  By  a  series  of  circumstances  too  lengthy 
to  detail,  this  last,  some  years  after  Malone's 
death,  passed  into  the  hands  of  Mr.  John  Mur- 
ray, who  published  it  in  1820.  In  the  same 
year,  and,  by  a  curious  coincidence,  upon  the 
same  day,  appeared  another  edition  based  upon 
the  Lowth  papers,  which  had  also  found  their 
way  into  other  hands.  This  was  prefaced  and 
annotated  by  Mr.  S.  W.  Singer,  and  a  second 
edition  of  it  was  issued  in  18)8  by  J.  R.  Smith. 
Beyond  these  three  editions  of  the  '  Anecdotes,' 
there  has  been  no  other  reprint  but  the  excellent 
little  compilation  in  the  '  Camelot '  series  which 
Mr.  John  Underhill  put  forth  in  1890. 

As  will  be  gathered  from  the  above,  Spence's 
own  selection  is  still  unpublished,  and  is  sup- 
posed to  remain  in  the  possession  of  the  New- 
castle family.  But  as  Malone  extracted  all  of  it 
that  he  thought  worth  keeping,  and  as  Singer 
printed  the  materials  on  which  it  was  based,  it 
is  not  likely  that  its  publication  now,  even  if 
it  were  found  to  be  practicable,  would  be  of 
material  interest,  except  to  show  what  Spence 
personally  regarded  as  deserving  of  preserva- 
tion. With  respect  to  the  '  Anecdotes' them- 
selves, there  can  be  little  doubt  that,  whatever 
their  subsequent  extension  may  have  been,  they 


36  Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

originated  in  Spence's  acquaintanceship  with 
Pope  ;  and  that  their  first  purpose  was  the  bring- 
ing together  of  such  dispersed  data  as  might 
serve  for  the  basis  of  his  biography.  ,  (So  much, 
in  fact,  Spence  told  Warburton  when  they  were 
returning  from  Twickenham  after  Pope's  death  ; 
and  then,  like  the  courteous,  amiable  '  silver 
penny '  that  he  was,  surrendered  all  his  memo- 
randa to  his  more  pretentious  companion,  in 
whose  subsequent  '  Life,'  for  Ruflfhead's  '  Life 
of  Pope '  is  really  Warburton's,  nearly  every 
anecdote  of  value  is  derived  from  Spence.) 
From  collecting  Popiana  to  collecting  ana  of 
Pope's  contemporaries,  would  be  a  natural  step  ; 
and  it  would  be  but  a  step  farther  to  add,  from 
time  to  time,  such  supplementary  notes  or  im- 
pressions de  voyage  as  presented  themselves, 
even  if  they  had  no  special  connection  with  the 
primary  matter,  which  is  Pope  and  Pope's 
doings.     Indeed,  in  Singer's  opinion,  Spence's 

*  Anecdotes  '  already  contain,  not  only  '  a  com- 
plete though  brief  autobiography '  of  the  poet, 
but  also  '  the  most  exact  record  of  his  opin- 
ions on  important  topics,'  —  a  record  which  is 

*  probably  the  more  genuine  and  undisguised, 
because  not  premeditated,  but  elicited  by  the 
impulse  of  the  moment.' 

This,  as  far  as  it  relates  to  Pope's  views  on 


Spence's  'Anecdotes'  37 

abstract  literary  questions,  is  no  doubt  true  ; 
but  '  genuine,'  '  undisguised,'  and  '  unpremedi- 
tated '  are  scarcely  the  epithets  which  mod- 
ern criticism  has  taught  us  to  apply  to  some, 
at  least,  of  Pope's  utterances  concerning  his 
contemporaries  ;  and  in  these  respects  we  are 
more  exactly  informed  than  the  Oxford  Pro- 
fessor of  Poetry.  Take,  for  instance,  the  well- 
known  Wycherley  correspondence.  '  People 
have  pitied  you  extremely,'  says  sympathetic 
Mr.  Spence,  who  professes  to  speak  verbatim^ 
'  on  reading  your  letters  to  Wycherley  [i.  e., 
the  correspondence  which  Pope  had  printed]  ; 
surely  'twas  a  very  difficult  thing  for  you  to 
keep  well  with  him  1 '  And  thereupon  Mr.  Pope, 
of  Twickenham  and  Parnassus,  replies  that  '  it 
was  the  most  difficult  thing  in  the  world  ; '  that  he 
'  was  extremely  plagued  up  and  down,  for  al- 
most two  years,'  with  Wycherley's  verses  ;  that 
Wycherley  was  really  angry  at  having  them  so 
much  corrected ;  that  his  memory  was  entirely 
gone,  —  and  so  forth. 1  All  of  which  Mr. 
Spence  confidingly  transfers  to  his  tablets.     But 

^  He  did  not  tell  Spence  (as  he  might  have  done)  that 
his  own  '  Damn  with  faint  praise  '  was  borrowed  from 
the  man  he  was  decrying.  '  And  with  faint  praises 
one  another  damn,'  is  a  line  in  one  of  Wycherley's 
prologues. 


38  Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

thanks  to  the  publication  by  Mr.  Courthope  in 
1889,  from  the  manuscripts  at  Longleat,  of  most 
of  Wycherley's  autograph  letters,  we  now  know 
that  the  correspondence  to  which  Spence  re- 
ferred had  been  considerably  '  edited  '  by  Pope 
with  the  view  of  misrepresenting  his  dealings 
with  Wycherley ;  and  there  is  even  something 
more  than  a  suspicion  that  he  actually  concocted 
those  of  Wycherley's  letters  for  which  there  are 
no  equivalent  vouchers  in  the  Marquis  of  Bath's 
collection.  In  any  case,  the  real  documents 
show  clearly  that,  instead  of  resenting  the  amend- 
ments and  alterations  of  his  '  Deare  Little  In- 
fallible/ as  he  calls  him,  the  old  dramatist 
received  them  with  effusive  gratitude  ;  and,  far 
from  reproaching  the  poet  for  neglecting  to  visit 
him  (which  Pope  implied),  constantly  delayed 
or  postponed  his  own  visits  to  Pope  at  Bin- 
field  ;  —  in  short,  did,  in  reality,  just  the  very 
reverse  of  what  he  is  represented  as  doing  in 
Pope's  garbled  correspondence.  So  that,  in 
these  worshipful  communiqu/s  to  Spence,  Pope 
must  simply  have  been  playing  at  that  eigh- 
teenth-century pastime  to  which  Swift  refers 
in  the  *  Polite  Conversation '  as  '  Selling  a 
Bargain,' 

In  Pope's  life,  it  is  to  be  feared,  there  were  not 
a  few  of  these  equivocal  mercantile  transactions- 


Spence's  'Anecdotes.'  39 

He  certainly  imposed  on  Spence's  credulity 
when  he  told  him  that  '  there  was  a  design 
which  does  not  generally  appear,'  in  other 
words,  a  cryptic  significance,  in  his  correspond- 
ence with  Henry  Cromwell,  And  he  also, 
with  equal  certainty,  disposed  of  '  a  great  Penny- 
worth '  (in  the  current  phrase)  when  he  gave 
him  the  —  from  his  own  point  of  view  —  emi- 
nently plausible  account  of  the  circumstances 
which  led  to  the  notorious  character  of  '  Atti- 
cus.'  Whether  Spence,  who  could  not  be  said 
to  be  unwarned,  since  he  records  Addison's 
caution  to  Lady  Mary  against  Pope's  '  devilish 
tricks,'  had  any  lurking  suspicion  that  Pope  was 
not  to  be  relied  upon,  does  not  appear.  But 
it  is  obvious  that,  without  Spence's  '  Anecdotes,' 
Pope's  biographers  would  have  played  but  a 
sorry  figure.  From  Spence  it  is  that  we  get  the 
best  account  of  Pope's  precocious  early  years 
and  studies  ;  of  his  boyish  epic  of  Alcander, 
Prince  of  Rhodes,  with  its  under-water  scene, 
and  its  four  books  of  one  thousand  lines  ;  of 
the  manner  of  his  translation  of  Homer  and  his 
plan  for  the  '  Essay  on  Man ; '  and  of  a  num- 
ber of  facts  concerning  the  trustworthiness  of 
which  there  can  be  no  reasonable  doubt.  Nor 
can  there  be  any  doubt  as  to  the  bulk  of  his 
purely  critical  utterances.     Many  of  these,  and 


40         Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

especially  such  as  deal  with  individual  authors, 
are  now  become  trite  and  faded.  However 
novel  may  have  been  the  announcement  under 
George  the  Second,  we  now  learn  without  a 
shock  of  surprise  that  Chaucer  is  an  unequalled 
tale-teller,  that  Bacon  was  a  great  genius,  that 
Milton's  style  is  exotic.  But,  upon  his  own 
craft,  Pope's  axioms  are  still  sometimes  worth 
hearing.  '  A  poem  on  a  slight  subject,'  he  says, 
'  requires  the  greater  care  to  make  it  consider- 
able enough  to  be  read.'  '  After  writing  a 
poem  one  should  correct  it  all  over,  with  one 
single  view  at  a  time.  Thus,  for  language :  if 
an  elegy,  "  These  lines  are  very  good,  but  are 
they  not  of  too  heroical  a  strain  ?  "  and  so  vice 
vena.'  'There  is  nothing  so  foolish  as  to  pre- 
tend to  be  sure  of  knowing  a  great  writer  by 
his  style.'  '  Nil  admirari  is  as  true  in  relation 
to  our  opinions  of  authors  as  it  is  in  morality  ; 
and  one  may  say,  O,  admiratores,  servum  pecus  1 
fully  as  justly  as  O,  Imitatores  ! '  '  The  great 
secret  how  to  write  well  is  to  know  thoroughly 
what  one  writes  about,  and  not  to  be  affected.' 
This  last,  however,  is  scarcely  more  than  an 
Horatian  commonplace. 

With  the  aid  of  Spence's  '  Anecdotes  '  we 
gain  admission  to  the  little  villa  by  the  Thames 
where,  during  the  spring  of  1744,  wasted  by  an 


Spence's  'Anecdotes.'  41 

intolerable  asthma,  but  waiting  serenely  for  the 
end,  Pope  lay  sinking  slowly.  Many  of  his 
sayings,  and  the  sayings  of  those  who  visited  his 
sick-room,  have  their  only  chronicle  in  this  col- 
lection. About  three  weeks  before  his  death, 
he  printed  his  *  Ethic  Epistles,'  copies  of  which 
he  gave  away  to  different  persons.  '  Here  am 
I,  like  Socrates,'  he  told  Spence,  '  distributing 
my  morality  to  my  friends,  just  as  I  am  dying,' 
On  Sunday,  the  6th  of  May,  he  lost  his  mind 
for  several  hours,  —  a  circumstance  which  sets 
him  wondering  *  that  there  should  be  such  a 
thing  as  human  vanity.'  Already  his  spirit  was 
escaping  fitfully  to  the  Unknown.  There  are 
false  colours  on  the  objects  about  him  ;  he  looks 
at  everything  '  as  through  a  curtain  ; '  he  sees 

*  a  vision.'  Most  of  all  he  suffers  from  his  ina- 
bility to  think.  But  the  old  love  of  letters  still 
survives  ;  he  quotes  his  own  verses  ;  and  when 
in  his  waking  moments  Spence  reads  to  him  the 

*  Daphnis  and  Chloe  '  of  Longus,  he  marvels 
how  the  infected  mind  of  the  Regent  Orleans 
can  have  relished  so  innocent  a  book.  As  to 
his  condition  he  has  no  illusions.  On  the  i^th, 
after  having  been  visited  by  Thompson  the 
quack,  who  had  been  treating  him  (as  Ward 
treated  Fielding)  for  dropsy,  and  professed  to 
find  him  better,  he  described  himself  to  Lyttel- 


42         Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

ton  as  'dying  of  a  hundred  good  symptoms  !  '  * 
*  On  every  catching  and  recovery  of  his  mind,* 
Spence  tells  us,  *  he  was  always  saying  some- 
thing kindly  either  of  his  present  or  his  absent 
friends  ' —  'as  if  his  humanity  had  outlived  his 
understanding,'  Many  of  the  well-known  fig- 
ures of  the  day  still  came  and  went  about  his 
bedside  —  Bolingbroke  from  Battersea,  tearful 
and  melancholy,  full-blown  Warburton,  Lyttel- 
ton  above-mentioned,  Marchmont,  blue-eyed 
Martha  Blount ;  and  it  was  '  very  observable  ' 
how  the  entry  of  the  lady  seemed  to  give  him 
temporary  strength,  or  a  new  turn  of  spirits. 
To  the  last  he  continued  to  struggle  manfully 
with  his  malady.  On  the  27th,  to  the  dismay 
of  his  friends,  he  had  himself  brought  down  to 
the  room  where  they  were  at  dinner ;  on  the 
28th  his  sedan  chair  was  carried  for  three  hours 
into  the  garden  he  loved  so  well,  then  filled 
with  the  blossoms  of  May  and  smelling  of  the 
coming  summer.  On  the  29th  he  took  the  air 
in  Bushey  Park,  and  a  little  later  in  the  day  re- 
ceived the  sacrament,  flinging  himself  fervently 
out  of  bed  to  receive  it  on  his  knees.  '  There 
is  nothing  that  is  meritorious/  he   said  after- 

^  This  must  have  been  a  commonplace.  '  Like  the  sick 
man  we  are  just  expiring  "  with  all  sorts  of  good  symp- 
toms," '  says  Swift,  in  the  '  Conduct  of  the  Allies,'  171 1. 


Spence's  'Anecdotes.'  43 

wards,  '  but  virtue  and  friendship,  and  indeed 
friendship  itself  is  only  a  part  of  virtue.'  On 
the  next  day,  the  30th  of  May,  1744,  he  died. 
'  They  did  not  know  the  exact  time,'  writes 
the  faithful  friend  to  whom  we  owe  so  many  of 
these  *  trivial,  fond  records,'  —  *  for  his  depart- 
ure was  so  easy  that  it  was  imperceptible  even 
to  the  standers-by.' 


CAPTAIN    CORAM'S   CHARITY. 

A  MONG  a  ragged  regiment  of  books,  very 
"^^  dear  to  their  owner,  but  in  whose  dilapi- 
dated compaiay  ho  reputable  volume  would 
greatly  care  to  travel  through  Coventry,  is  a 
sheepskin-clad  tract  entitled  *  Memoires  Relat- 
ing to  the  State  of  the  Royal  Navy  of  England, 
For  Ten  Years,  Determin'd  December,  1688.' 
It  dates  from  those  antiquated  days  when  even 
statistics  had  their  air  of  scholarship,  and  their 
motto  from  '  Tully '  or  *  the  Antients '  (Quid 
Dulcius  Otio  Liiterato  I  —  it  is  in  this  case)  ; 
and  the  year  of  issue  is  1690.  The  name  of  the 
author  does  not  appear,  but  his  portrait  by 
Kneller  does  ;  and  he  was  none  other  than  the 
diarist  Samuel  Pepys,  sometime  Secretary  to  the 
Admiralty  under  the  second  Charles  and  his 
successor.  In  itself  the  little  volume  is  an 
extremely  instructive  one,  as  much  from  the 
light  it  throws  upon  the  prominent  part  played 
by  its  writer  in  the  reconstruction  of  the  Caro- 
line navy,  as  from  its  exposure  of  the  lamentable 
mismanagement  which  permitted  toadstools  as 


Captain  Coram's  Charity.  45 

big  as  Mr.  Secretary's  fists  to  flourish  freely  in 
the  ill-ventilated  holds  of  his  Majesty's  ships-of- 
war.  But  the  special  attraction  of  the  particular 
copy  to  which  we  are  referring  lies  in  certain 
faded  inscriptions  which  it  contains.  On  March 
14,  1724,  it  was  presented  by  one  '  C.  Jackson' 
to  *  Tho.  Coram,'  by  whom  in  turn  it  was 
transferred  to  a  Mr.  Mills,  being  accompanied 
by  a  holograph  note  which  is  pasted  at  the  end  : 
*  To  M""  Mills  These  Worthy  Sir  I  happend 
to  find  among  my  few  Books,  Mr  Pepps,  his 
memoires  [there  has  evidently  been  a  struggle 
over  the  spelling  of  the  name],  w'^''  I  thought 
might  be  acceptable  to  you  &  therefore  pray  you 
to  accept  of  it.  I  am  w**"  much  Respect  Sir 
your  most  humble  Ser'  Thomas  Coram.  June 
10*,  1746.'  It  is  not  a  lengthy  document,  but, 
with  its  unaffected  wording  and  its  simple  refer- 
ence to  '  my  few  Books,'  it  gives  a  pleasant 
impression  of  the  brave  old  mariner  to  whom, 
even  at  the  present  day,  so  many  hapless  mortals 
owe  their  all  ;  and  whose  ruddy,  kindly  face, 
with  its  curling  white  hair,  still  beams  on  us 
from  Hogarth's  canvas  at  the  Foundling. 

Captain  Coram  must  have  been  seventy-eight 
years  old  when  he  wrote  the  above  letter,  for  he 
had  been  born,  at  Lyme  Regis  in  Dorsetshire, 
as  far  back  as  1668.    Of  his  boyhood  nothing  is 


4$  Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

known  ;  but  in  1694  he  was  working  as  a  ship- 
wright at  Taunton,  Massachusetts.  His  bene- 
volent instincts  seem  to  have  developed  early, 
for  in  December,  1703,  he  conveyed  to  the 
Taunton  authorities  some  fifty-nine  acres  of 
land  as  the  site  for  a  church  or  schoolhouse. 
In  the  deed  of  gift  he  is  described  as  '  of  Bos- 
ton, in  New  England,  sometimes  residing  in 
Taunton,  in  the  County  of  Bristol,  Shipwright.* 
He  also  gave  a  library  to  Taunton  ;  and,  from 
the  fact  that  the  Common  Prayer  Book  used  in 
the  church  of  that  town  was  presented  to  him 
for  the  purpose  by  Mr.  Speaker  Onslow,  must 
have  been  successful  in  enlisting  in  his  good 
offices  the  sympathies  of  others.  In  course  of 
time  he  became  master  of  a  ship  ;  and,  in  1719, 
a  glimpse  of  his  life,  of  which  there  are  scant 
details,  shows  him  being  plundered  and  mal- 
treated by  wreckers  at  Cuxhaven,  while  a  pas- 
senger on  a  vessel  called  the  '  Sea  Flower,'  upon 
which  occasion  the  affidavit  describes  him  as 
'  of  London,  Mariner  and  Shipwright.'  At  this 
date  he  was  engaged  in  the  supply  of  stores  to 
the  navy.  He  must  have  prospered  fairly  in  his 
calling,  for  he  soon  afterwards  retired  from  a 
seafaring  life  in  order  to  live  upon  his  means, 
and  occupy  himself  entirely  with  charitable  ob- 
jects.    In  the  Plantations,  as  they  were  then 


Captain  Coram  s  Charity.  47 

called,  he  took  great  interest ;  being  notably 
active  as  regards  the  colonization  of  Georgia 
and  the  improvement  of  the  Nova  Scotian  cod 
fisheries.  Lord  Walpole  of  Wolterton  (Horace 
Walpole's  uncle),  who  had  met  him,  testified 
warmly  to  his  honesty,  his  disinterestedness,  and 
his  knowledge  of  his  subject.  Neither  an  edu- 
cated nor  a  polished  man  (and  not  always  a 
judicious  one),  he  was  indefatigable  in  the  pur- 
suit of  his  purpose,  and  his  single-minded  phil- 
anthropy was  beyond  the  shadow  of  a  doubt. 
'  His  arguments,'  said  his  intimate  friend  Dr. 
Brocklesby,  '  were  nervous,  though  not  nice  — 
founded  commonly  upon  facts,  and  the  conse- 
quences that  he  drew,  so  closely  connected  with 
them,  as  to  need  no  further  proof  than  a  fair 
explanation.  When  once  he  made  an  impres- 
sion, he  took  care  it  should  not  wear  out ;  for  he 
enforced  it  continually  by  the  most  pathetic  re- 
monstrances. In  short,  his  logic  was  plain 
sense  ;  his  eloquence,  the  natural  language  of 
the  heart.' 

His  crowning  enterprise  was  the  obtaining  of 
a  charter  for  the  establishment  of  the  Foundling 
Hospital.  Going  to  and  fro  at  Rotherhithe, 
where  in  his  latter  days  he  lived,  he  was  con- 
stantly coming  upon  half-clad  infants,  '  some- 
times   alive,  sometimes    dead,  and    sometimes 


48  Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

dying,'  who  had  been  abandoned  by  their 
parents  to  the  mercy  of  the  streets ;  and  he 
determined  to  devote  his  energies  to  the  pro- 
curing of  a  public  institution  in  which  they 
might  find  an  asylum.  For  seventeen  years, 
with  an  unconquerable  tenacity,  and  in  the  face 
of  the  most  obstinate  obstruction,  apathy,  and 
even  contempt,  he  continued  to  urge  his  suit 
upon  the  public,  being  at  last  rewarded  by  a 
Royal  charter  and  the  subscription  of  sufficient 
funds  to  commence  operations.  An  estate  of 
fifty-six  acres  was  bought  in  Lamb's  Conduit 
Fields  for  ^3, 500  ;  and  the  building  of  the  Hos- 
pital was  begun  from  the  plans  of  Theodore 
Jacobsen.  Among  its  early  Governors  were 
many  contemporary  artists  who  contributed 
freely  to  its  adornment,  thereby,  according  to 
the  received  tradition,  sowing  the  seed  of  the 
existing  Royal  Academy.  Handel,  too,  was 
one  of  its  noblest  benefactors.  For  several 
years  he  regularly  superintended  an  annual  per- 
formance of  the  '  Messiah  '  in  the  Chapel  (an 
act  which  produced  no  less  than  £j,ooo  to  the 
institution),  and  he  also  presented  it  with  an 
organ.  Having  opened  informally  in  1741  at  a 
house  in  Hatton  Garden,  the  Governors  moved 
into  the  new  building  at  the  completion  of  the 
west  wing  in  1745.     But  already  their    good 


Captain  Coram's  Charity.  49 

offices  had  begun  to  be  abused.  Consigning 
children  to  the  Foundling  was  too  convenient  a 
way  of  disposing  of  them  ;  and,  even  in  the 
Hatton  Garden  period,  the  supply  had  been 
drawn,  not  from  London  alone,  but  from  all 
parts  of  the  Kingdom.  It  became  a  lucrative 
trade  to  convey  infants  from  remote  country 
places  to  the  undiscriminating  care  of  the 
Charity.  Once  a  waggoner  brought  eight  to 
town,  seven  of  whom  were  dead  when  they 
reached  their  destination.  On  another  occasion 
a  man  with  five  in  baskets  got  drunk  on  the 
road,  and  three  of  his  charges  were  suffocated. 
The  inevitable  outcome  of  this  was  that  the 
Governors  speedily  discovered  they  were  ad- 
mitting far  more  inmates  than  they  could  possibly 
afford  to  maintain.  They  accordingly  applied  to 
Parliament,  who  voted  them  ;^  10,000,  but  at  the 
same  time  crippled  them  with  the  obligation  to 
receive  all  comers.  A  basket  was  forthwith 
hung  at  the  gate,  with  the  result  that,  on  the 
first  day  of  its  appearance,  no  less  than  117  in- 
fants were  successively  deposited  in  it.  That 
this  extraordinary  development  of  the  intentions 
of  the  projectors  could  continue  to  work  satis- 
factorily was  of  course  impossible,  and  great 
mortality  ensued.  As  time  went  on,  however, 
a  wise  restriction  prevailed ;  and  the  Hospital 

4 


50  Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

now  exists  solely  for  those  unmarried  mothers 
whose  previous  character  has  been  good,  and 
whose  desire  to  reform  is  believed  to  be  sincere. 
Fortunately,  long  before  the  era  of  what  one  of 
the  accounts  calls  its  '  frightful  efflorescence '  — 
an  efflorescence  which,  moreover,  could  never 
have  occurred  under  Captain  Coram's  original 
conditions  —  its  benevolent  founder  had  been 
laid  to  rest  in  its  precincts.  After  his  wife's 
death  he  fell  into  difficulties,  and  subscriptions 
were  collected  for  his  benefit.  When  this  was 
broken  to  the  old  man —  too  modest  himself  to 
plead  his  own  cause,  and  too  proud  to  parade 
his  necessity  —  he  made,  according  to  Hawkins, 
the  following  memorable  answer  to  Dr.  Brock- 
lesby :  '  I  have  not  wasted  the  little  wealth  of 
which  I  was  formerly  possessed  in  self-indul- 
gence, or  vain  expenses,  and  am  not  ashamed 
to  confess,  that  in  this  my  old  age  I  am  poor.' 

Although  the  Sunday  services  are  still  well  at- 
tended. Captain  Coram's  Charity  is  no  longer 
the  '  fashionable  morning  lounge '  it  was  in  the 
Georgian  era,  when,  we  are  told,  the  grounds 
were  crowded  daily  with  brocaded  silks,  gold- 
headed  canes,  and  three-cornered  hats  of  the 
orthodox  Egham,  Staines  and  Windsor  pattern. 
No  members  of  the  Royal  Academy  now  assem- 
ble periodically  round  the  historical  blue  dragon 


Captain  Coram' s  Charity.  51 

punch-bowl,  still  religiously  preserved,  over 
Vi^hich  Hogarth  and  Lambert  and  Highmore  and 
the  other  pictorial  patrons  of  the  place  must  of- 
ten have  chirruped  '  Life  a  Bubble,'  or  '  Drink 
and  Agree,'  at  their  annual  dinners ;  neither  is 
there  of  our  day  any  munificent  maestro  like 
Handel  to  present  the  institution  vi^ith  a  new 
organ  or  the  original  score  of  an  oratorio.  But 
if  you  enter  to  the  left  of  Mr.  Calder  Marshall's 
statue  at  the  gate  in  Guildford  Street,  you  shall 
still  find  the  enclosure  dotted  with  red-coated 
boys  playing  at  cricket,  and  with  girls  in  white 
caps  ;  and  in  the  quiet,  unpretentious  building 
itself  are  many  time-honoured  relics  of  its  past. 
Here,  for  example,  is  one  of  Hogarth's  contri- 
butions to  his  friend's  enterprise,  the  '  March  of 
the  Guards  towards  Scotland,  in  the  year  174'),' 
commonly  called  the  '  March  to  Finchley'  — 
that  famous  performance  for  which  King  George 
the  Second  of  irate  memory  said  he  ought  to 
be  '  bicketed,'  and  which  the  artist,  in  a  rage, 
forthwith  dedicated  to  the  King  of  Prusia, 
with  one  '  s.'  A  century  and  a  half  has  passed 
since  it  was  executed,  but  it  is  still  in  excellent 
preservation,  having  of  late  years,  for  greater 
precaution,   been  placed  under  glass. ^     Here, 

1  It  was  disposed  of  in  1750  by  raffle  or  lottery.     '  Yes- 
terday,' —  says  the  '  General  Advertiser '  for  i  May  in  that 


52  Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

too,  is  the  already  mentioned  full-length  of  the 
founder  —  a  portrait  of  the  masterly  qualities 
and  superb  colouring  of  which  neither  McAr- 
dell's  mezzotint  nor  Nutter's  stipple  gives  any 
adequate  idea.  Here,  again,  is  one  of  Hogarth's 
'  failures,'  the  '  Moses  Brought  to  Pharaoh's 
Daughter,'  which  is  not  so  great  a  failure  after 
all.  Certainly  it  compares  favourably  with  the 
'  Finding  of  Moses'  by  the  professed  history- 
painter,  Frank  Hayman,  which  hangs  hard  by, 
and  is  an  utterly  bald  and  lifeless  production. 
On  the  contrary,  in  Hogarth's  picture,  the  ex- 
pression in  the  eyes  of  the  mother,  which  linger 
on  the  child  as  her  hand  mechanically  receives 
the  money,  is  one  of  those  touches  which  make 
the  whole  world  kin.  Among  the  circular  paint- 
ings of  similar  charities  is  a  charming  little 
Gainsborough  of  the  Charterhouse,  while  the 
'Foundling'  and  'St.  George's  Hospital'  are 
from  the  brush  of  Richard  Wilson.  There  is  a 
dignified  portrait  of  Handel  by  Kneller,  which 
makes  one  wonder  how  the  caricaturists  could 

year,  — '  Mr.  Hogarth's  Subscription  was  closed.  1843 
Chances  being  subscrib'd  for,  M'  Hogarth  gave  the  re- 
maining 167  Chances  to  the  Foundling  Hospital;  at  two 
o'clock  the  Box  was  open'd,  and  the  fortunate  Chance 
was  Number  1941,  which  belongs  to  the  said  Hospital ; 
and  the  same  Night  M'  Hogarth  delivered  the  Picture  to 
the  Governors.' 


Captain  Coram  s  Charity.  53 

ever  have  distorted  him  into  the  '  Charming 
Brute  ; '  and  also  a  bust  by  Roubillac,  being  the 
original  model  for  the  statues  in  Westminster 
Abbey  and  Old  Vauxhall  Gardens.  There  are 
autographs  of  Hogarth  and  Coram  and  John 
"Wilkes  the  demagogue ;  there  is  a  copy  of  his 
'  Christmas  Stories  '  presented  by  the  author, 
Charles  Dickens  ;  there  is  a  case  in  one  of  the 
windows  full  of  the  queer,  forlorn  '  marks  or 
tokens'  which,  in  the  basket  days,  were  found 
attached  to  its  helpless  inmates  —  ivory  fish,  sil- 
ver coins  of  Queen  Anne  or  James,  scraps  of 
paper  with  doggerel  rhymes,  lockets,  lottery 
tickets,  and  the  like.  As  you  pass  from  the 
contemplation  of  these  things  — a  contemplation 
not  without  its  touch  of  pathos  —  you  peep  into 
the  church,  mentally  filling  the  empty  benches 
in  the  organ  loft  with  the  singing  faces  and  pure 
voices  of  the  childish  choristers,  and  you  re- 
member that  here  Benjamin  West  painted  the 
altar-piece,  and  here  Laurence  Sterne  preached. 
Once  more  in  Guildford  Street,  you  turn  in- 
stinctively towards  another  thoroughfare,  where 
lived  a  later  writer  who  must  often  have  made 
the  pilgrimage  you  have  just  accomplished.  For 
at  No.  13  Great  Coram  Street  was  the  home  of 
William  Makepeace  Thackeray,  and  from  the 
shadow  of  the  Foundling,  in  July,  1840,  he  sent 


54  Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

forth  his  '  Paris  Sketch  Book.'  When,  seven 
years  later,  he  was  writing  his  greatest  novel, 
Captain  Coram's  Charity  still  lingered  in  his 
memory.  It  is  on  the  wall  of  its  church  that 
old  Mr.  Osborne,  of  '  Vanity  Fair'  and  Russell 
Square,  erects  his  pompous  tablet,  to  his  dead 
son  :  it  is  in  the  same  building  that,  sitting  '  in 
a  place  whence  she  could  see  the  head  of  the 
boy  under  his  father's  tombstone,'  poor  Emmy 
feasts  her  hungry  maternal  eyes  on  unconscious 
little  Georgy. 


♦THE   FEMALE  QUIXOTE.' 

/^NE  evening  in  the  spring  of  the  year  175 1, 
^-^  the  famous  St.  Dunstan,  or  Devil  Tavern, 
by  Temple  Bar,  —  over  whose  Apollo  Chamber 
you  might  still  read  the  rhymed  '  Welcome ' 
of  Ben  Jonson;  whence  Steele  had  scrawled 
hasty  excuses  to  *  Prue '  in  Bury  Street;  and 
where  Garth  and  Swift  and  Addison  had  often 
dined  together,  —  was  the  scene  of  a  remark- 
able literary  celebration.  A  young  married 
lady,  not  then  so  well-known  as  she  afterwards 
became,  had  written  a  novel  called  the  '  Life  of 
Harriot  Stuart,'  which  was  either  just  published 
or  upon  the  point  of  issuing  from  the  press. 
It  was  her  first  effort  in  fiction  ;  and,  probably 
through  William  Strahan  the  printer,  one  of 
whose  employes  she  married,  she  had  sought 
and  obtained  the  acquaintance  of  Samuel  John- 
son. The  great  man  thought  very  highly  of  her 
abilities :  so  much  so,  that  he  proposed  to  his 
colleagues  at  the  Ivy  Lane  Club  (the  prede- 
cessor of  the  more  illustrious  Literary  Club)  to 
commemorate  the  birth  of  the  book  by  an  *  all- 


$6  Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

night  sitting.'  Pompous  Mr.  Hawkins,  who 
tells  the  story,  says  that  the  guests,  to  the 
number  of  near  twenty,  including  Mrs.  Lenox 
(for  that  was  the  lady's  name),  her  husband, 
and  a  female  acquaintance,  assembled  at  the 
Devil  at  about  eight  o'clock  in  the  evening. 
The  supper  is  characterised  as  *  elegant/  a 
prominent  feature  in  it  being  a  '  magnificent  hot 
apple-pye,'  which,  because,  forsooth  (the  '  for- 
sooth '  is  Hawkins's),  Mrs.  Lenox  was  also  a 
minor  poet,  her  literary  foster-father  had  caused 
to  be  stuck  with  bay-leaves.  Besides  this, 
after  invoking  the  Muses  by  certain  rites  of 
his  own  invention,  which  should  have  been 
impressive,  but  are  not  described,  Johnson 
'  encircled  her  brows '  with  a  crown  of  laurel 
specially  prepared  by  himself.  These  cere- 
monies completed,  the  company  began  to  spend 
the  evening  *  in  pleasant  conversation,  and 
harmless  mirth,  intermingled  at  different  periods 
with  the  refreshments  of  coffee  and  tea.'  But 
there  must  have  been  stronger  potations  as  well, 
since  the  narrator,  Hawkins,  who  had  a  '  raging 
tooth,'  and  is  therefore  excusably  inexplicit, 
speaks  of  the  desertion  by  some  of  those  pres- 
ent of  '  the  colours  of  Bacchus  ;  '  and  he  ex- 
pressly mentions  the  fact  that  Johnson,  whose 
face,   at    five    o'clock,    '  shone   with   meridian 


'  The  Female  Quixote.'  57 

splendour,'  had  confined  himself  exclusively  to 
lemonade.  By  daybreak,  the  *  harmless  mirth' 
was  beginning  to  be  intermingled  with  slumber, 
from  which  those  who  succumbed  were  only 
rallied  with  difficulty  by  a  fresh  relay  of  coffee. 
At  length,  when  St.  Dunstan's  Clock  was  near- 
ing  eight,  after  waiting  two  hours  for  an  atten- 
dant sufficiently  wakeful  to  compile  the  bill,  the 
company  dispersed.  Their  symposium  had  been 
Platonic  in  its  innocence  ;  but  to  Hawkins,  de- 
moralised by  toothache,  and  sanctimonious  by  tem- 
perament, their  issue  into  the  morning  light  of 
Fleet  Street  had  all  the  aspect,  and  something 
of  the  remorse,  of  a  tardily-terminated  debauch. 
Before  he  could  mentally  disinfect  himself,  he 
was  obliged  to  take  a  turn  or  two  in  the  Temple, 
and  breakfast  respectably  at  a  coffee-house. 

Although  she  is  now  forgotten,  Charlotte 
Lenox,  the  heroine  of  these  Johnsonian  '  high 
jinks,'  was  once  what  Browning  would  have 
termed  *  a  person  of  importance  in  her  day.' 
Her  father.  Colonel  James  Ramsay,  was  Lieu- 
tenant-Governor of  New  York.  When  his 
daughter  was  about  fifteen,  he  sent  her  to 
England,  consigning  her  to  the  charge  of  a 
relative  in  this  country,  who,  by  the  time  she 
reached  it,  was  either  dead  or  mad.  Then 
Colonel  Ramsay  himself  departed  this  life,  and 


58  Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

she  was  left  without  a  protector.  Lady  Rock- 
ingham took  her  up,  receiving  her  into  her 
household ;  but  an  obscure  love-affair  put  an 
end  to  their  connection  ;  and  she  subsequently 
found  a  fresh  patroness  in  the  Duchess  of 
Newcastle.  She  must  also  have  tried,  the  stage, 
since  Walpole  speaks  of  her  as  a  '  deplorable 
actress.'  Her  sheet  anchor,  however,  was 
literature.  In  1747  Paterson  published  a  thin 
volume  of  her  poems,  dedicated  to  '  the  Lady 
Issabella  [sic]  Finch,'  —  a  volume  in  which  she 
certainly  '  touched  the  tender  stops  of  various 
quills,'  since  it  recalls  most  of  the  singers  who 
were  popular  in  her  time.  There  are  odes 
in  imitation  of  Sappho  (with  one  '  p ")  ;  there 
is  a  pastoral  after  the  manner  of  Mr.  Pope ; 
there  is  '  Envy,  a  Satire  ;  '  there  is  a  versification 
of  one  of  Mr.  Addison's  '  Spectators.'  To  this 
maiden  effort,  a  few  years  later,  followed  the 
novel  above-mentioned,  which  is  supposed  to 
have  been  more  or  less  autobiographical ;  then 
came  another  novel,  '  The  Female  Quixote  ; ' 
then  '  Shakespeare  Illustrated  ; '  then  a  trans- 
lation of  Sully's  '  Memoirs  ; '  and  then  again 
more  novels,  plays,  and  translations.  Mrs. 
Lenox  lived  into  the  present  century,  supported 
at  the  last  partly  from  the  Literary  Fund,  and 
partly  by  the  Right  Hon.  George  Rose,  who 


'  The  Female  Quixote'  59 

befriended  her  in  her  latter  days,  and  ultimately, 
when  she  died,  old  and  very  poor,  in  Dean's 
Yard,  Westminster,  paid  the  expenses  of  her 
burial.  She  is  said  —  by  Mr.  Croker,  of  course 
—  to  have  been  *  plain  in  her  person.'  If 
this  were  so,  she  must  have  been  considerably 
flattered  in  the  portrait  by  Reynolds  which 
Bartolozzi  engraved  for  Harding's  *  Shake- 
speare.' It  is  also  stated,  on  the  authority  of 
Mrs.  Thrale,  that,  although  her  books  were 
admired,  she  herself  was  disliked.  As  regards 
her  own  sex,  this  may  have  been  true  ;  but  it 
is  dead  against  the  evidence  as  regards  the  men. 
Johnson,  for  example,  openly  preferred  her  be- 
fore Mrs.  Carter,  Miss  Hannah  More,  and 
Miss  Burney  ;  and  he  never,  to  judge  by  the 
references  in  Boswell's  '  Life,'  wavered  in  his 
allegiance.  He  wrote  the  Dedications  to  *  The 
Female  Quixote'  and  'Shakespeare  Illus- 
trated ; '  he  helped  her  materially  (as  did  also 
Lord  Orrery)  in  her  version  of  P^re  Brumoy's 

*  Theatre  des   Grecs ;  '  he   quoted  her   in  the 

*  Dictionary  ; '  he  drew  up,  as  late  as  1775,  the 

*  Proposals  '  for  a  complete  edition  of  her  works, 
and  he  reviewed  her  repeatedly.  What  is  more, 
he  introduced  her  to  Richardson,  by  whom,  up- 
on the  ground  of  her  gifts  and  her  misfortunes 
(She  'has  genius,'  and  she  '  has  been  unhappy,' 


6o  Eighteenth  Century  Fignettes. 

said  the  sentimental  little  man),  she  was  at  once 
admitted  to  the  inner  circle  of  the  devoted 
listeners  at  Parson's-Green.  Another  of  her 
admirers  was  Fielding,  who,  in  his  last  book, 
the  *  Journal  of  a  Voyage  to  Lisbon,'  calls  her 
'  the  inimitable  and  shamefully  distressed  author 
of  the  Female  Quixote.'  Finally,  Goldsmith 
wrote  the  epilogue  to  the  unsuccessful  comedy 
of  'The  Sister,'  which  she  based  in  1769  upon 
her  novel  of  *  Henrietta,'  — an  act  which  is  the 
more  creditable  on  his  part  because  the  play 
belonged  to  the  ranks  of  that  genteel  comedy 
which  he  detested.  A  woman  who  could  thus 
enlist  the  suffrage  and  secure  the  service  of  the 
four  greatest  writers  of  her  day  must  have  pos- 
sessed exceptional  powers  of  attraction,  either 
mental  or  physical ;  and  this  of  itself  is  almost 
sufficient  to  account  for  the  lack  of  a  corre- 
sponding enthusiasm  in  her  own  sex. 

How  she  obtained  her  education,  the  scanty 
records  of  her  life  do  not  disclose.  But  it  is 
clear  that  she  had  considerable  attainments ; 
and  she  obviously  added  to  them  a  faculty  for 
ingenious  flattery,  which,  after  the  fashion  of 
that  day,  she  exhibited  in  her  books.  In  her  best 
effort,  '  The  Female  Quixote,'  there  is  a  hand- 
some reference  to  that  '  admirable  Writer,'  Mr. 
Richardson  ;  and  Johnson  is  styled  '  the  greatest 


'  The  Female  Quixote'  6i 

Genius  in  the  present  Age/  '  Rail,'  she  makes 
one  of  her  characters  say  elsewhere,  and  pain- 
fully A-propos  de  bottes,  —  '  Rail  with  premedi- 
tated Malice  at  the  *'  Rambler ; "  and,  for  the 
want  of  Faults,  turn  even  its  inimitable  Beauties 
into  Ridicule  :  The  Language,  because  it  reaches 
to  Perfection,  may  be  called  stiff,  laboured,  and 
pedantic  ;  the  Criticisms,  when  they  let  in  more 
Light  than  your  weak  Judgment  can  bear,  super- 
ficial and  ostentatious  Glitter ;  and  because 
those  Papers  contain  the  finest  System  of 
Ethics  yet  extant,  damn  the  queer  Fellow,  for 
over-propping  Virtue  ; '  —  in  all  of  which,  it  is 
to  be  feared,  the  bigots  of  this  iron  time  will 
see  nothing  but  the  rankest  log-rolling.  Yet  it 
was  not  to  Mrs.  Lenox  that  Johnson  said, 
'  Madam,  consider  what  your  praise  is  worth.' 
On  the  contrary,  if  Dr.  Birkbeck  Hill  conjec- 
tures rightly,  he  wrote  a  not  unfavourable  little 
notice  of  the  book  in  the  '  Gentleman's  Maga- 
zine '  for  March,  1752,  —  a  notice  which,  if  it 
does  no  more,  at  least  compactly  summarises  the 
scheme  of  the  story.  '  Arabella,'  it  says  (the  full 
title  is  '  The  Female  Quixote ;  or,  the  Adventures 
of  Arabella'  ),  *  is  the  daughter  of  a  statesman, 
born  after  his  retirement  in  disgrace,  and  edu- 
cated in  solitude,  at  his  castle,  in  a  remote  pro- 
vince.    The  romances  which  she  found  in  the 


62  Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

library  after  her  mother's  death,  were  almost  the 
only  books  she  had  read  ;  from  these  therefore 
she  derived  her  ideas  of  life ;  she  believed  the 
business  of  the  world  to  be  love,  every  incident 
to  be  the  beginning  of  an  adventure,  and  every 
stranger  a  knight  in  disguise.  The  solemn  man- 
ner in  which  she  treats  the  most  common  and 
trivial  occurrences,  the  romantic  expectations 
she  forms,  and  the  absurdities  which  she  com- 
mits herself,  and  produces  in  others,  afford  a 
most  entertaining  series  of  circumstances  and 
events.'  And  then  he  goes  on  to  quote,  as 
coming  from  one  equally  '  emulous  of  Cer- 
vantes, and  jealous  of  a  rival,'  the  opinion  which 
Mr.  Fielding  had  expressed  a  few  days  earlier, 
in  his  'Covent  Garden  Journal,' — an  opinion 
which,  if,  as  Johnson  asserts,  he  had  at  this 
time  no  knowledge  of  the  author  of  the  book, 
does  even  more  credit  to  his  generosity  than  to 
his  critical  judgment.  For  the  author  of  '  Tom 
Jones'  not  only  devotes  rather  more  than  two 
handsome  columns  to  '  The  Female  Quixote  ; ' 
but,  professing  to  give  his  report  of  it  '  with  no 
less  Sincerity  than  Candour,'  gravely  proceeds  to 
show  in  what  it  falls  short  of,  in  what  it  equals, 
and  in  what  it  excels  (!)  the  master-piece  of 
which  it  is  a  professed  imitation.  According  to 
him,  the  advantage  of  Mrs.   Lenox   in  the  last 


'  The  Female  Quixote.'  63 

respect  (for  the  others  may  be  neglected)  lies  in 
the  fact  that  it  is  more  probable  that  the  reading 
of  romances  would  turn  the  head  of  a  young 
lady  than  the  head  of  an  old  gentleman  ;  that 
the  character  of  Arabella  is  more  endearing 
than  that  of  Don  Quixote  ;  that  her  situation 
is  more  interesting ;  and  that  the  incidents  of 
her  story,  as  well  as  the  story  itself,  are  less 
'  extravagant  and  incredible '  than  those  of  the 
immortal  hero  of  Cervantes.  Finally,  he  sums 
up  with  the  words  which  Johnson  afterwards 
reproduced,  in  part,  in  the  '  Gentleman's  Maga- 
zine : '  '  I  do  very  earnestly  recommend  it, as  a 
most  extraordinary  and  most  excellent  Perform- 
ance. It  is  indeed  a  Work  of  true  Humour, 
and  cannot  fail  of  giving  a  rational,  as  well  as 
very  pleasing  Amusement  to  a  sensible  Reader, 
who  will  at  once  be  instructed  and  very  highly 
diverted.  Some  Faults  perhaps  there  may  be, 
but  I  shall  leave  the  unpleasing  Task  of  pointing 
them  out  to  those  who  will  have  more  Pleasure 
in  the  Office.  This  Caution,  however,  I  think 
proper  to  premise,  that  no  Persons  presume  to 
find  many  [He  is  speaking  in  his  assumed  char- 
acter of  Censor  of  Great  Britain].  For  if  they 
do,  I  promise  them  the  Critic  and  not  the 
Author  will  be  to  blame.' 
Pro  captu  lectoris  Iiabent  sua  fata  libelli.     In 


64         Eighteenth  Century  Fignettes. 

spite  of  the  verdict  of  Johnson  and  Fielding,  — 
that  is  to  say,  in  spite  of  the  verdict  of  the 
Macaulay  and  Thackeray  of  the  Eighteenth 
Century,  —  the  Critic,  it  is  to  be  feared,  must 
be  blamed  to-day.  Were  Fielding  alone,  one 
might  discount  his  opinion  by  assuming  that  he 
would  naturally  welcome  a  work  of  art  which 
was  on  his  side  rather  than  on  that  of  Richard- 
son ;  but  this  would  not  account  for  the  equally 
favourable  opinion  of  Johnson.^  Nor  could  it 
be  laid  entirely  to  the  novelty  of  the  attempt,  for 
*  Tom  Jones  '  and  '  Clarissa  '  and  '  Peregrine 
Pickle,'  masterpieces  all,  had  by  this  time  been 
written,  and  can  still  be  read,  which  it  is  difficult 
to  say  of  '  The  Female  Quixote  ;  or,  the  Ad- 
ventures of  Arabella.'  Mrs.  Lenox's  funda- 
mental idea,  no  doubt,  is  a  good  one,  although 
the  character  of  the  heroine  has  its  feminine 
prototypes  in  the  '  Pr^cieuses  Ridicules '  of 
Moli^re  and  the  Biddy  Tipkin  of  Steele's  '  Ten- 
der Husband.'  It  may  be  conceded,  too,  that 
some  of  the  manifold  complications  which  arise 

*  Johnson  had,  if  not  a  taste,  at  least  an  appetite,  for 
the  old-fashioned  romances  which  Mrs.  Lenox  satirised. 
Once,  at  Bishop  Percy's,  he  selected  '  Felixmarte  of 
Hircania'  (in  folio)  for  his  habitual  reading,  and  he  read 
it  through  religiously.  Upon  another  occasion  his  choice 
fell  upon  Burke's  favourite,  '  Palmerin  of  England.' 


'  The  Female  Quixote."  65 

from  her  bringing  every  incident  of  her  career 
to  the  touchstone  of  the  high-falutin'  romances 
of  the  Sieur  de  la  Calpren^de,  and  that  '  grave 
and  virtuous  virgin,'  Madeleine  de  Scud^ry,  are 
diverting  enough.  The  lamentable  predicament 
of  the  lover,  Mr.  Glanville,  who  is  convicted  of 
imperfect  application  to  the  pages  of '  Cassandra,' 
by  his  hopeless  ignorance  of  the  elementary  fact 
that  the  Orontes  and  Oroondates  of  that  perform- 
ance are  one  and  the  same  person  ;  the  case  of 
the  luckless  dipper  into  Thucydides  and  Herodo- 
tus at  Bath  who  is  confronted,  to  his  utter  dis- 
comfiture, with  *  History  as  She  is  wrote '  in 
*  Clelia'  and  '  Cleopatra  ; '  the  persistence  of  Ara- 
bella in  finding  princes  in  gardeners,  and  rescuers 
in  highwaymen  —  are  things  not  ill-invented. 
But  repeated  they  pall ;  and  not  all  the  insistence 
upon  her  natural  good  sense  and  her  personal 
charms,  nor  (as  compared  with  such  concurrent 
efforts  as  Mrs.  Haywood's  '  Betsy  Thoughtless  ') 
the  inoffensive  tone  of  the  book  itself,  can  re- 
concile us  to  a  heroine  who  is  unable  to  pass 
the  sugar-tongs  without  a  reference  to  Parisatis, 
Princess  of  Persia,  or  Cleobuline,  Princess  of 
Corinth  ;  —  who  holds  with  the  illustrious  Man- 
dana  that,  even  after  ten  years  of  the  most 
faithful  services  and  concealed  torments,  it  is 
still  presumptuous  for  a  monarch  to  aspire  to 
5 


66  Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

her  hand  ;  —  and  who,  upon  the  slightest  provo- 
cation, plunges  into  tirades  of  this  sort :  *  Had 
you  persevered  in  your  Affection,  and  continued 
your  Pursuit  of  that  Fair-one,  you  would,  per- 
haps, ere  this,  have  found  her  sleeping  under 
the  Shade  of  a  Tree  in  some  lone  Forest, 
as  Philodaspes  did  his  admirable  Delia,  or 
disguised  in  a  Slave's  Habit,  as  Ariobarsanes 
saw  his  Divine  Olfmpia  ;  or  bound  haply  in  a 
Chariot,  and  have  had  the  Glory  of  freeing  her, 
as  Ambriomer  did  the  beauteous  Agione;  or  in 
a  Ship  in  the  Hands  of  Pirates,  like  the  incom- 
parable Eli^a  ;  or '  —  at  which  point  she  is 
fortunately  interrupted.  In  another  place  she 
fancies  her  uncle  is  in  love  with  her,  and  there- 
upon, '  wiping  some  Tears  from  her  fine  Eyes,' 
apostrophises  that  elderly  and  astounded  rela- 
tive in  this  wise  — '  Go  then,  unfortunate  and 
lamented  Uncle ;  go,  and  endeavour  by  Rea- 
son and  Absence  to  recover  thy  Repose  ;  and  be 
assured,  whenever  you  can  convince  me  you 
have  triumphed  over  these  Sentiments  which 
now  cause  both  our  Unhappiness,  you  shall  have 
no  Cause  to  complain  of  my  Conduct  towards 
you.'  There  is  an  air  of  unreality  about  all  this 
which,  one  would  think,  should  have  impeded 
its  popularity  in  its  own  day.  In  the  Spain  of 
Don  Quixote  it  is  conceivable  ;  it  is  intolerable 


'  The  Female  Qtiixote.'  6y 

in  the  England  of  Arabella.  But  there  are  other 
reasons  which  help  to  account  for  the  oblivion 
into  which  the  book  has  fallen.  One  is,  that  by 
neglecting  to  preserve  the  atmosphere  of  the 
age  in  which  it  was  written,  it  has  missed  an 
element  of  vitality  which  is  retained  even  by 
such  fugitive  efforts  as  Coventry's  '  Pompey  the 
Little/  ^  Indeed,  beyond  the  above-quoted  ref- 
erences to  Johnson  and  Richardson,  and  an 
obscure  allusion  to  the  beautiful  Miss  Gunnings 
who,  at  this  date,  divided  the  Talk  of  the  Town 
with  the  Earthquake,  there  is  scarcely  any 
light  thrown  upon  contemporary  life  and  man- 
ners throughout  the  whole  of  Arabella's  history. 
Another,  and  a  graver  objection  (as  one  of  her 
critics,  whose  own  admirable  '  Amelia '  had  been 
but  recently  published,  should  have  known  better 
than  any  one)  is  that,  in  spite  of  the  humour  of 
some  of  the  situations,  the  characters  of  the 
book  are  colourless  and  mechanical.  Fielding's 
Captain  Booth  and  his  wife,  Mrs.  Bennet  and 
Serjeant  Atkinson,  Dr.  Harrison  and  Colonel 
Bath,  are  breathing  and  moving  human  beings : 
the  Glanvilles  and  Sir  Charleses  and  Sir  Georges 
of  Mrs.  Charlotte  Lenox  are  little  more  than 
shrill-voiced  and  wire-jointed  '  High- Life  ' 
puppets. 

1  This,  like  '  Betsy  Thoughtless,'  belongs  to  1751. 


FIELDING'S   'VOYAGE  TO   LISBON.' 

VrOT  far  from  where  these  lines  are  written, 
^  '  on  the  right-hand  side  of  the  road  from 
Acton  to  Ealing,  stands  a  house  called  Ford- 
hook.  Shut  in  by  walls,  and  jealously  guarded 
by  surrounding  trees,  it  offers  itself  but  furtively 
to  the  incurious  passer-by.  Nevertheless,  it 
has  traditions  which  might  well  give  him  pause. 
Even  in  this  century,  it  enjoyed  the  distinction 
of  belonging  to  Lady  Byron,  the  poet's  wife  ; 
and  in  its  existing  drawing-room,  '  Ada,  sole 
daughter  of  my  house  and  heart,'  was  married 
to  William,  Earl  of  Lovelace.  But  an  earlier 
and  graver  memory  than  this  lingers  about  the 
spot.  More  than  one  hundred  and  thirty-eight 
years  ago,  on  a  certain  Wednesday  in  June,  the 
cottage  which  formerly  occupied  the  site  was 
the  scene  of  one  of  the  saddest  leave-takings  in 
literature.  On  this  particular  day  had  gathered 
about  its  door  a  little  group  of  sympathetic 
friends  and  relatives,  who  were  evidently  assem- 
bled to  bid  sorrowful  good-bye  to  some  one, 


Fielding's  '  Voyage  to  Lisbon.'         69 

for  whom,  as  the  clock  was  striking  twelve,  a 
coach  had  just  drawn  up.  Presently  a  tall  man, 
terribly  broken  and  emaciated,  but  still  wearing 
the  marks  of  dignity  and  kindliness  on  his  once 
handsome  face,  made  his  appearance,  and  was 
assisted,  with  some  difficulty  (for  he  had  lost 
the  use  of  his  limbs),  into  the  vehicle.  An 
elderly,  homely-looking  woman,  and  a  slim  girl 
of  seventeen  or  eighteen,  took  their  seats  beside 
him  without  delay  ;  and,  amid  the  mingled  tears 
and  good  wishes  of  the  spectators,  the  coach 
drove  off  swiftly  in  the  direction  of  London. 
The  sick  man  was  Henry  Fielding,  the  famous 
novelist ;  his  companions,  his  second  wife  and 
his  eldest  daughter.  He  was  dying  of  a  com- 
plication of  diseases ;  and,  like  Peterborough 
and  Doddridge  before  him,  was  setting  out  in 
the  forlorn  hope  of  finding  life  and  health  at 
Lisbon.  Since  Scott  quoted  them  in  1821,  the 
words  in  which  his  journal  describes  his  de- 
parture have  been  classic  : 

'  Wedm^iay,  June  26,  1754.  —  On  this  day, 
the  most  melancholy  sun  I  had  ever  beheld 
arose,  and  found  me  awake  at  my  house  at 
Fordhook.  By  the  light  of  this  sun,  I  was,  in 
my  own  opinion,  last  to  behold  and  take  leave 
of  some  of  those  creatures  on  whom  I  doated 
with  a  mother-like  fondness,  guided  by  nature 


70         Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

and  passion,  and  uncured  and  unhardened  by 
all  the  doctrine  of  that  philosophical  school 
where  I  had  learnt  to  bear  pains  and  to  despise 
death. 

'  In  this  situation,  as  I  could  not  conquer 
nature,  I  submitted  entirely  to  her,  and  she 
made  as  great  a  fool  of  me  as  she  had  ever  done 
of  any  woman  whatsoever :  under  pretence  of 
giving  me  leave  to  enjoy,  she  drew  me  in  to 
suffer  the  company  of  my  little  ones,  during 
eight  hours  ;  and  I  doubt  not  whether,  in 
that  time,  I  did  not  undergo  more  than  in  all 
my  distemper.' 

Of  Fielding's  life,  it  may  be  said  truly,  that 
nothing  in  it  became  him  like  the  leaving  it. 
At  the  moment  of  his  starting  for  Lisbon, 
his  case,  as  is  clear  from  the  above  quotation, 
was  already  regarded  by  himself  as  desperate. 
To  '  a  lingering  imperfect  gout'  had  succeeded 
'  a  deep  jaundice  ; '  and  to  jaundice,  asthma  and 
dropsy.  He  was  past  the  power  of  the  Duke 
of  Portland's  powder ;  past  the  famous  tar- 
water  of  the  good  Bishop  Berkeley.  Had  he 
acknowledged  his  danger  earlier,  his  life  might 
have  been  prolonged,  though,  in  all  probability, 
but  for  brief  space.  His  health  had  for  some 
time  been  breaking  ;  he  was  worn  out  by  his 
harassing  vocation  as  a  Middlesex  Magistrate  ; 


Fielding's  '  f^oyage  to  Lisbon.'        71 

and  he  feared  that,  in  the  event  of  his  death, 
his  family  must  starve.  This  last  consideration 
it  was,  that  tempted  him  to  defer  his  retirement 
to  the  country  in  order  to  break  up  a  notorious 
gang  of  street-robbers,  and  so  earn  (as  he 
fondly  hoped)  some  government  provision  for 
those  helpless  ones  whom  he  must  leave  behind 
him.  He  succeeded  in  his  task,  although  he 
failed  of  his  reward  ;  and  what  was  worse,  as 
regards  his  health,  much  irrecoverable  oppor- 
tunity had  been  lost.  By  the  time  that  his 
labours  were  at  an  end,  he  was  a  doomed  man. 
The  Bath  waters  could  effect  nothing  in  the 
advanced  stage  of  his  malady  ;  and,  after  a  short 
sojourn  at  his  '  little  house  '  at  Ealing,  he  took 
his  passage  in  the  'Queen  of  Portugal,'  Richard 
Veal,  master,  for  Lisbon.  Of  this  voyage  he 
has  left  his  own  account ;  and  the  posthumous 
volume  thus  produced  is  a  curiosity  of  literature. 
It  is  one  of  the  most  touching  records  in  the  lan- 
guage of  fortitude  under  trial  ;  and  it  is  not 
surprising  to  learn,  as  we  do  from  Hazlitt,  that 
it  was  a  favourite  book  with  another  much- 
enduring  mortal,  the  gentle  and  uncomplaining 
♦  Elia.' 

In  these  days  of  steam  power,  and  floating 
palaces,  and  luxurious  sick-room  appliances,  it 
is  not  easy  to  realize  the  intolerable  tedium  and 


72         Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

discomfort,  especially  to  an  invalid,  of  a  passage 
in  a  second-rate  sailing-ship  in  the  middle  of  the 
last  century.  When,  after  a  rapid  but  fatiguing 
two  hours'  drive.  Fielding  reached  Redriff 
(Rotherhithe),  he  had  to  undergo  a  further 
penance.  The  '  Queen  of  Portugal '  lay  in 
mid-stream,  a  circumstance  which  necessitated 
his  being  carried  perilously  across  slippery 
ground,  transferred  to  a  wherry,  and  finally 
hoisted  over  the  ship's  side  in  a  chair.  Nor 
were  his  troubles  by  any  means  at  an  end  when 
he  found  himself  securely  deposited  in  the  cabin. 
The  voyage,  already  more  than  once  deferred, 
was  again  postponed.  First,  the  vessel  could 
not  be  cleared  at  the  Custom  House  until 
Thursday,  because  Wednesday  was  a  holiday 
(Proclamation  Day)  ;  then  the  skipper  himself 
announced  that  he  should  not  weigh  anchor 
before  Saturday.  Meanwhile,  from  his  unusual 
exertions  and  other  causes,  Fielding's  main 
malady  had  gained  so  considerably  that  he  was 
obliged  to  summon  Dr.  William  Hunter  from 
Covent  Garden  to  tap  him  —  an  operation  which 
he  had  already  more  than  once  undergone  with 
considerable  relief.  On  Sunday  the  vessel 
dropped  down  to  Gravesend,  reaching  the 
Nore  on  July  i.  Then,  for  a  week,  they  were 
becalmed  in  the  Downs,  making  Ryde  just  in 


Fielding's  '  yoyage  to  Lisbon.'        73 

time  to  lie  safely  on  the  Motherbank  during  a 
violent  storm.  Before  the  ship  left  Ryde,  the 
23d  of  July  had  arrived;  and  it  was  not  until 
the  second  week  in  August  that  she  sailed  up 
the  Tagus,  having  taken  seven  weeks  to  per- 
form a  journey  which  then,  at  most,  occupied 
three,  and  is  now  generally  accomplished  in 
about  four  days. 

If  the  '  Journal  of  a  Voyage  to  Lisbon '  were 
no  more  than  the  chronicle  of  the  facts  thus 
summarized  —  nay,  if  it  were  no  more  than 
what  Walpole  flippantly  calls  the  '  account  how 
his  [Fielding's]  dropsy  was  treated  and  teased 
by  an  innkeeper's  wife  in  the  Isle  of  Wight,'  it 
would  require  and  deserve  but  little  considera- 
tion. That  it  is  a  literary  masterpiece  is  not 
pretended  ;  nor,  in  the  circumstances  of  its 
composition,  could  a  masterpiece  be  looked  for 
—  even  from  a  master.  But  it  is  interesting 
not  so  much  by  the  events  which  it  narrates  as 
by  the  indirect  light  which  it  throws  upon  its 
writer's  character,  upon  his  manliness,  his  pa- 
tience, and  that  inextinguishable  cheerfulness 
which,  he  says  in  the  '  Proposal  for  the  Poor,' 
*  was  always  natural  to  me.'  His  sufferings 
must  have  been  considerable  (he  had  to  be 
tapped  again  before  the  voyage  ended)  ;  and 
yet,  with  the  exception  of  some  not  resentful 


74         Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

comment  upon  the  inhumanity  of  certain  water- 
men and  sailors  who  had  jeered  at  his  ghastly 
appearance,  no  word  of  complaint  as  to  his  own 
condition  is  allowed  to  escape  him.  On  the 
other  hand,  his  solicitude  for  his  fellow-travel- 
lers is  unmistakable.  One  of  the  most  touching 
pages  in  the  little  volume  relates  how,  when 
his  wife,  worn  out  with  toothache,  lay  sleeping 
lightly  in  the  stateroom,  he  and  the  skipper, 
who  was  deaf,  sat  speechless  over  a  *  small 
bowl  of  punch '  in  the  adjoining  cabin  rather 
than  run  the  risk  of  waking  her  by  a  sound. 
'  My  dear  wife  and  child,'  he  says,  speaking  of 
a  storm  in  the  Channel,  *  must  pardon  me,  if 
what  I  did  not  conceive  to  be  any  great  evil 
to  myself,  I  was  not  much  terrified  with  the 
thoughts  of  happening  to  them :  in  truth,  I 
have  often  thought  they  are  both  too  good,  and 
too  gentle,  to  be  trusted  to  the  power  of  any 
man  I  know,  to  whom  they  could  possibly  be 
so  trusted.'  In  another  place  he  relates,  quite 
in  his  best  manner,  how  he  rebuked  a  certain 
churlish  Custom-house  officer  for  his  want  of 
courtesy  to  Mrs.  Fielding.  At  times  one  for- 
gets that  it  is  a  dying  man  who  is  writing,  so 
invincible  is  that  appetite  for  enjoyment  which 
made  Lady  Mary  say  he  ought  to  have  been 
immortal.     Not  long  after  they  reached  Ryde 


Fielding's  'Voyage  to  Lisbon.'        75 

he  wrote  to  his  half-brother  and  successor  John 
(afterwards  Sir  John)  Fielding :  '  I  beg  that  on 
the  Day  you  receive  this  Mrs.  Daniel  [his 
mother-in-law]  may  know  that  we  are  just  risen 
from  Breakfast  in  Health  and  Spirits  [the  italics 
are  ours]  this  twelfth  Instant  at  9  in  the  morn- 
ing.' At  Ryde  they  were  shamefully  entreated  by 
the  most  sharp-faced  and  tyrannical  of  landladies, 
in  whose  incommodious  hostelry  they  sought 
temporary  refuge  ;  and  yet  it  is  at  Ryde  that 
he  chronicles  '  the  best,  the  pleasantest,  and  the 
merriest  meal  [in  a  barn],  with  more  appetite, 
more  real,  solid  luxury,  and  more  festivity,  than 
was  ever  seen  in  an  entertainment  at  White's.' 
And  almost  the  last  lines  of  the  '  Journal '  recall 
a  good  supper  in  a  Lisbon  coffee-house  for 
which  they  '  were  as  well  charged,  as  if  the  bill 
had  been  made  on  the  Bath  road,  between 
Newbury  and  London.' 

But  the  pleasures  of  the  table  play  a  subor- 
dinate part  in  the  sick  man's  diary,  and  often 
only  prompt  a  larger  subject,  as  when  the  John 
Dory  which  regales  them  at  Torbay  introduces 
a  disquisition  on  the  improvement  of  the  London 
fish  supply.  As  might  be  anticipated,  some  of 
his  best  passages  deal  with  the  humanity  about 
him.  "With  characteristic  reticence,  he  says 
little  of  his  own  companions,  but  his  pen  strays 


76         Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

easily  into  graphic  sketches  of  the  little  world  of 
the  '  Queen  of  Portugal.'  The  ill-conditioned 
Custom-house  officer,  already  mentioned  ;  the 
military  fop  who  comes  to  visit  the  captain  at 
Spithead  ;  the  sordid  and  shrewish  Ryde  land- 
lady with  her  chuckle-headed  nonentity  of  a 
husband  —  are  all  touched  by  a  hand  which,  if 
tremulous,  betrays  no  diminution  of  its  cunning. 
Of  all  the  portraits,  however,  that  of  the  skipper 
is  the  best.^  The  rough,  illiterate,  septuagena- 
rian sea-captain,  '  full  of  strange  oaths '  and 
superstitions,  despotic,  irascible  and  good- 
natured,  awkwardly  gallanting  the  ladies  in  all 
the  splendours  of  a  red  coat,  cockade  and  sword, 
and  heart-broken,  privateer  though  he  had  been, 
when  his  favourite  kitten  is  smothered  by  a 
feather-bed,  has  all  the  elements  of  a  finished 
individuality.     It    is  with  respect  to  him   that 

1  The  picture,  it  should  be  added,  was  not,  at  first, 
presented  in  its  racy  entirety.  "When,  in  February,  1755, 
the  'Journal  of  a  Voyage  to  Lisbon '  was  given  to  the 
world  for  the  benefit  of  Fielding's  widow  and  children, 
although  the  '  Dedication  to  the  Public '  affirmed  the 
book  to  be  '  as  it  came  from  the  hands  of  the  author,' 
many  of  the  franker  touches  which  go  to  complete  the 
full-length  of  Captain  Richard  Veal,  as  well  as  sundry 
other  particulars,  were  withheld.  This  question  is  fully 
discussed  in  the  Introduction  to  the  limited  edition  of 
the  '  Journal,'  published  in  1892  by  the  C  his  wick  Press. 


Fielding's  'Voyage  to  Lisbon!  yj 

occurs  almost  the  only  really  dramatic  incident 
of  the  voyage.  A  violent  dispute  having  arisen 
about  the  exclusive  right  of  the  passengers  to 
the  cabin,  Fielding  resolved,  not  without  mis- 
givings, to  quit  the  ship,  ordering  a  hoy  for  that 
purpose,  and  taking  care,  as  became  a  magis- 
trate, to  threaten  Captain  Veal  vi'ith  what  that 
worthy  feared  more  than  rock  or  quicksand,  the 
terrors  of  retributory  legal  proceedings.  The 
rest  may  be  told  in  the  journalist's  own  words  : 
'  The  most  distant  sound  of  law  thus  frightened 
a  man,  who  had  often,  I  am  convinced,  heard 
numbers  of  cannon  roar  round  him  with  intrepi- 
dity. Nor  did  he  sooner  see  the  hoy  approach- 
ing the  vessel,  than  he  ran  down  again  into  the 
cabin,  and,  his  rage  being  perfectly  subsided,  he 
tumbled  on  his  knees,  and  a  little  too  abjectly 
implored  for  mercy. 

'  I  did  not  suffer  a  brave  man  and  an  old  man, 
to  remain  a  moment  in  this  posture  ;  but  I  im- 
mediately forgave  him.'  Most  of  those  who 
have  related  this  anecdote  end  discreetly  at  this 
point.  Fielding,  however,  is  too  honest  to  allow 
us  to  place  his  forbearance  entirely  to  the  credit 
of  his  magnanimity.  '  And  here,  that  I  may  not 
be  thought  the  sly  trumpeter  of  my  own  praises, 
I  do  utterly  disclaim  all  praise  on  the  occasion. 
Neither  did  the  greatness  of  my  mind  dictate, 


78         Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

nor  the  force  of  my  Christianity  exact  this  for- 
giveness. To  speak  truth,  I  forgave  him  from  a 
motive  which  would  make  men  much  more  for- 
giving, if  they  were  much  wiser  than  they  are ; 
because  it  was  convenient  for  me  so  to  do.' 

With  the  arrival  of  the  '  Queen  of  Portugal' 
at  Lisbon  the  *  Journal '  ends,  and  no  further 
particulars  of  its  writer  are  forthcoming.  Two 
months  later  he  died  in  the  Portuguese  capital, 
and  was  buried  among  the  cypresses  of  the 
beautiful  English  cemetery.  Luget  Britannia 
gremio  non  dari  Fovere  natum  —  is  inscribed 
upon  his  tomb. 


HANWAY'S    TRAVELS. 

/^NE  hot  day  in  Holborn,  —  one  of  those 
^-^  very  hot  days  when,  as  Mr.  Andrew  Lang 
or  M.  Octave  Uzanne  has  said,  the  brown 
backs  buckle  in  the  fourpenny  boxes,  and  you 
might  poach  an  egg  on  the  cover  of  a  quarto,  — 
the  incorrigible  bookhunter  who  pens  these 
pages  purchased  two  octavo  volumes  of '  Beauties 
of  the  Spectators,  Tatlers  and  Guardians,  Con- 
nected and  Digested  under  Alphabetical  Heads.' 
That  their  contents  were  their  main  attraction 
would  be  too  much  to  say.  For  the  literary 
'  Beauties  '  of  one  age,  like  those  other 

'  Beauties  reckoned 
So  killing  —  under  George  the  Second/ 

are  not  always  the  '  Beauties '  of  another.  Where 
the  selector  of  to-day  would  put  Sir  Roger  de 
Coverley  and  Will  Wimble,  the  Everlasting 
Club,  or  the  Exercise  of  the  Fan,  the  judi- 
cious gentlemen  in  rusty  wigs  and  inked  ruffles 
who  managed  the  'connecting'  and  'digest- 
ing'  department   for   Messrs.   Tonson   in   the 


8o  Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

Strand,  put  passages  on  Detraction,  Astronomy, 
Chearfulness  (with  an  *  a '),  Bankruptcy,  Self- 
Denial,  Celibacy,  and  the  Bills  of  Mortality. 
They  must  have  done  a  certain  violence  to  their 
critical  convictions  by  including,  in  forlorn  isola- 
tion, such  flights  of  imagination  as  the  '  Inkle 
and  Yarico  '  of  Mr.  Steele  and  the  '  Hilpah  and 
Shalum'  of  Mr.  Addison.  The  interest  of  this 
particular  copy  is,  however,  peculiar  to  itself. 
It  is  bound  neatly  in  full  mottled  calf,  with 
stamped  gold  roses  at  the  corners  of  the  covers  ; 
and  at  the  points  of  a  star  in  the  centre  are 
printed  the  letters  E,  G,  C,  G.  An  autograph 
inscription  in  the  first  volume  explains  this 
mystery.  They  are  the  initials  of  the  '  Twin 
Sisters  Miss  Elizabeth,  &  Miss  Caroline  Grigg,' 
to  whom  are  addressed  the  votive  couplets  that 
follow :  — 

'  Freedom  &  Virtue,  Twin  born  from  Heavn  came. 
And  like  two  Sisters  fair,  are  botii  the  same. 
On  Thee  Elizabeth  may  Virtue  smile ! 
And  Thou,  sweet  Caroline,  Life's  cares  beguile 
May  Gracious  Providence  protect  &  guide, 
That  Days  &  Vears  in  peace  may  slide ; 
And  bring  You  Bliss,  in  Parents  love, 
Till  You  shall  reach  the  bliss  above.' 

After  this  comes  — '  Thus  prays  Your  very  true 
friend  &  affectionate   Servant  J   Hanway,'  —  a 


Hanways's  Travels.  8i 

signature  which  proves  that  one  may  be  a  praise- 
worthy    Philanthropist  and    a    copious    Pam- 
phleteer and  yet  write  no  better  verse  than  the 
Bellman.     For  without  consulting  the  records 
at  the   Marine  Society  in  Bishopsgate  Street, 
there  is  little  doubt  that  the  writer  of  these  lines 
was  the  once  well-known  Jonas  Hanway  of  the 
Ragged  Schools,  the  Magdalen  Hospital,  and 
half  a  hundred  other  benevolent  undertakings. 
Indeed  the  circumstance  that  the  book  is  ad- 
dressed to  two  ladies  is,  of  itself,  almost  proof 
of  this,  since,  either  from  bachelor  caution,  or 
from  some  other  obscure  cause,  Hanway  always 
attaches  a  Dingley  to  his  Stella.    His  '  Journey 
from  Portsmouth  to  Kingston  '  is  addressed  to 
two  ladies ;   so   also  is  his  famous  '  Essay  on 
Tea.'     But  there  is  stronger  confirmation  still. 
He  was  in  the  habit  of  giving  away  copies  of 
this  very  book  —  in  fact  of  this  very  edition  — 
as  presents  to  his  friends  and  proUgis.      Not 
long  ago,  in  a  second-hand  bookseller's  cata- 
logue, was  advertised  another  pair  of  the  same 
volumes,  in  '  old  English  red  morocco,  elabo- 
rately tooled,'  which  had  been  given  by  Hanway 
to  his  'young  friend  Master  John  Thomson.' 
It  was  dated  from   Red  Lion  Square  in  1772, 
the  same  year  in  which  his  verses  to  the  Demoi- 
selles Grigg  were  written.     Master  Thomson's 
6 


82         Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

initials  were  also  impressed  upon  the  sides  of 
this  copy  ;  and  although  the  Muses  had  not  been 
invoked  in  his  behalf,  the  book  contained  a 
holograph  letter  of  nine  pages  of  useful  advice, 
by  the  aid  of  which,  coupled  with  the  '  Beauties,' 
he  was  to  learn  '  to  attain  the  treasures  of  health, 
wealth,  peace,  and  happiness.'  But  from  the 
excellent  condition  of  the  volumes  in  both  in- 
stances, it  must  be  inferred  that  neither  the  twin 
sisters  nor  Mr.  Hanway's  '  young  friend  '  acted 
upon  Johnson's  precept  and  gave  their  days 
and  nights  to  the  periods  of  Addison. 

Of  Hanway  himself,  Johnson  said,  in  his 
memorable  way,  *  that  he  acquired  some  repu- 
tation by  travelling  abroad,  but  lost  it  all  by 
travelling  at  home.'  His  '  Historical  Account  of 
the  British  Trade  on  the  Caspian  Sea '  (generally 
called  '  Travels  in  Persia'),  17^3,  4  vols.,  quarto, 
did  indeed  once  enjoy  a  considerable  reputation, 
and  his  adventures  were  adventurous  enough. 
Beginning  life  as  a  Lisbon  merchant,  he  subse- 
quently accepted  a  partnership  in  a  St.  Peters- 
burgh  house.  At  this  date  the  Russo-Persian 
trade  had  recently  been  established  by  Captain 
John  Elton,  who  afterwards,  to  the  disgust  of 
the  St.  Petersburgh  factors,  took  service  under 
Nadir  Shah.  Hanway  accompanied  a  caravan 
of  woollen  goods  to  P^fsia ;  and  here  began  his 


Hanway's  Travels.  83 

experiences.  He  found  Astrabad  in  rebellion, 
and  the  caravan  was  plundered.  Thereupon, 
after  many  privations  and  narrow  escapes,  he 
made  his  way  to  Nadir  Shah,  who  ordered 
restitution  of  the  goods,  —  a  restitution  which 
was  more  easy  to  order  than  to  execute,  although 
something  was  restored.  But  the  traveller's 
troubles  were  by  no  means  at  an  end.  In  the 
Caspian,  on  the  return  voyage,  his  ship  was  at- 
tacked by  the  Ogurtjoy  pirates,  and  he  himself 
afterwards  fell  seriously  ill.  To  this  succeeded, 
in  consequence  of  the  presence  of  plague  at 
Cashan,  the  amenities  of  a  long  quarantine  on 
an  island  in  the  Volga,  in  the  final  stage  of 
which  the  unhappy  travellers  *  were  required  to 
strip  themselves  entirely  naked  in  the  open  air 
[this  was  in  a  Russian  October],  and  go  through 
the  unpleasant  ceremony  of  having  each  a  large 
pail  of  warm  water  thrown  over  them,  before 
they  were  permitted  to  depart.'  When  Hanway 
at  last  reached  Moscow,  he  found  that  the  op- 
portune death  of  a  relative  had  placed  him  in 
possession  '  of  pecuniary  advantages,  much  ex- 
ceeding any  he  could  expect  from  his  engage- 
ment in  Caspian  affairs.'  He  nevertheless  stayed 
five  years  and  a  half  more  at  St.  Petersburgh  ; 
and  then,  returning  to  England,  took  up  his 
abode  in  London,  where  he  proceeded  to  pre- 


84  Eighteenth  Century  l^ignettes. 

pare  his  travels  for  the  press.  Being  laudably 
unwilling  that  any  publisher  should  run  the  risk 
of  losing  money  by  him,  the  first  edition  was 
printed  at  his  own  expense ;  but  the  book  proved 
a  great  success,  passing  speedily  into  many 
libraries  (into  Gray's  among  others),  and  An- 
drew Millar  ultimately  purchased  the  copyright. 
The  remainder  of  Hanway's  life  was  spent  in 
philanthropy  and  pamphleteering.  He  helped 
Sir  John  Fielding  and  others  to  set  on  foot 
the  still  existent  Marine  Society  for  training 
boys  for  the  sea  ;  he  helped  to  remodel  '  Cap- 
tain Coram's  Charity,'  of  which  he  was  a  Gov- 
ernor ;  he  founded  the  Magdalen  Hospital ; 
he  advocated  the  interests  of  Sunday-Schools 
and  Ragged  Schools,  of  chimney-sweeps  and 
the  infant  poor.  Not  the  least  important  of 
his  services  to  the  community  was  his  vindica- 
tion, in  the  teeth  of  the  chairmen  and  hackney 
coachmen,  of  the  use,  by  men,  of  the  umbrella, 
hitherto  confined  to  the  weaker  sex.^  As  a 
pamphleteer  he  was  unwearied,  and  the  mere 
titles  of  his   efforts   in   this  way   occupy   four 

1  *  Good  housewives  all  the  winter's  rage  despise. 
Defended  by  the  riding-hood's  disguise  : 
Or  underneath  th'  umbrella's  oily  shed, 
Safe  thro'  the  wet,  on  clinking  pattens  tread.* 

Gay's  Trivia,  1716,  i.  209-212. 


Hanway's  Travels.  85 

columns  of  Messrs.  Stephen  and  Lee's  great 
dictionary.  He  wrote  on  the  Naturalization  of 
the  Jews  ;  he  wrote  on  Vails-Giving,  on  the 
American  War,  on  Pure  Bread,  on  Solitary 
Confinement  ;  he  wrote  '  Earnest  Advice  '  and 
'  Moral  Reflections '  to  Everybody  on  Every- 
thing. To  misuse  Ben  Jonson's  words  of 
Shakespeare,  *  He  flowed  with  that  facility  that 
sometimes  it  was  necessary  he  should  be 
stopped.'  One  entire  pamphlet  on  bread  was 
dictated  in  the  space  of  a  forenoon,  says  his 
secretary  and  biographer  Pugh.  When  it  is 
further  explained  that  it  consisted  of  two  hun- 
dred law  sheets,  or  ninety  octavo  pages,  it  is  ob- 
vious that  the  excellent  author's  powers  as  a 
pamphleteer  must  have  been  preternatural. 
But  it  is  hardly  surprising  to  find  even  his 
admirer  admitting  that  his  ideas  were  not  well 
arranged,  and  that  his  style  was  undeniably 
diff'use. 

This  latter  quality  is  aptly  illustrated  by  a 
volume  which  lies  before  us,  being  in  fact  the 
identical  record  of  those  travels  in  England  by 
which  Johnson  asserted  that  Mr.  Hanway  had 
lost  the  celebrity  he  had  acquired  by  his 
'  Travels  in  Persia.'  The  very  title  of  the  book 
—  a  privately  printed  quarto  —  is  as  long  as  that 
of  *  Pamela.'     It  runs  thus,  —  •  A  Journal  of 


86  Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

Eight  Days  Journey  from  Portsmouth  to 
Kingston  upon  Thames  ;  through  Southamp- 
ton, Wiltshire,  etc.  With  Miscellaneous 
Thoughts,  Moral  and  Religious ;  in  a  Series  of 
Sixty-four  Letters  :  Addressed  to  two  Ladies  of 
the  Partie.  To  which  is  added,  An  Essay  on 
tea,  considered  as  pernicious  to  Health,  obstruct- 
ing Industry,  and  impoverishing  the  Nation : 
With  an  Account  of  its  Growth,  and  great  Con- 
sumption in  these  Kingdoms.  With  several 
political  Reflections;  and  Thoughts  on  Public 
Love.  In  Twenty-five  Letters  to  the  same 
Ladies.  By  a  Gentleman  of  the  Partie.  London : 
H.  Woodfall,  1756.'  The  '  Partie,'  by  the 
way,  if  we  are  to  trust  Wale's  emblematic 
frontispiece,  must  have  been  limited  to  the 
writer  and  these  two  ladies,  discreetly  dis- 
guised in  the  '  Contents  '  as  '  Mrs.  D.'  and 
•  Mrs.  O.'  Why,  as  remarked  by  an  inge- 
nious *  Monthly  Reviewer,'  it  should  be 
necessary  to  tell  '  Mrs.  D.'  and  '  Mrs.  O.' 
(whom  the  artist  shows  us  conversing  agreeably 
with  Mr.  Hanway  under  an  awning  in  a  two- 
oared  boat)  what,  having  been  of  the  '  Partie,' 
they  probably  knew  quite  as  well  as  he  did,  is 
not  explained.  But  on  the  other  hand,  it  may 
be  contended  that  he  really  tells  them  very  little, 
since  the  *  Moral  and  Religious '  reflections  al- 


Hanway's  Travels.  87 

most  entirely  swallow  up  the  Travels.  *  On  every 
occurrence,'  says  the  critic  quoted,  '  he  expati- 
ates, and  indulges  in  reflection.  The  appear- 
ance of  an  inn  upon  the  road  suggests  ...  an 
eulogium  on  temperance ;  the  confusion  of  a 
disappointed  Landlady  gives  rise  to  a  Letter  on 
Resentment ;  and  the  view  of  a  company  of 
soldiers  furnishes  out  materials  for  an  Essay  on 
War.'  The  company  of  soldiers  was  Lord 
George  Bentinck's  regiment  of  infantry  on  their 
march  to  Essex  ;  and  one  sighs  to  think  with 
what  a  bustle  of  full-blooded  humanity— r  what 
a  '  March  to  Finchley '  of  incident —  the  author 
of  a  *  Journal  of  a  Voyage  to  Lisbon '  would 
have  filled  the  storied  page.  But  Mr.  Hanway 
is  not  the  least  penitent ;  rather  is  he  proud 
of  his  reticence.  He  specially  expresses  his 
gratitude  to  the  hostess  '  who  gave  occasion 
for  my  thoughts  on  resentment,  a  subject  far 
more  interesting  than  whether  a  battle  was 
fought  at  this,  or  any  other  place,  five  hun- 
dred years  ago.'  (If  '  Mrs.  D.'  and  '  Mrs. 
O.'  were  really  of  this  opinion,  they  must  have 
been  curiously  constituted.)  '  Can  you  bear 
with  this  medley  of  both  worlds  ? '  he  asks 
them  on  another  occasion,  and  it  is  not  easy  to 
reply  except  by  saying  that  there  is  too  much  of 
one  and  too  little  of  the  other.     To  pass  Bevis 


88  Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

Mount  with  the  barest  mention  of  Lord  Peter- 
borough ;  to  come  to  Amesbury  and  '  Prior's 
Kitty '  and  be  fobbed  off  with  '  a  pious  rhap- 
sody ;  '  to  stop  at  Stockbridge  for  which  Steele 
was  member  when  he  was  expelled  from  Par- 
liament, only  to  enter  upon  fifty  pages  of 
indiscriminate  reflections  on  Public  Love,  Self- 
examination,  the  Vanity  of  Life,  and  half  a 
dozen  other  instructive  but  irrelevant  subjects, 
—  these  things,  indeed,  are  hard  to  bear,  es- 
pecially as  they  are  not  recommended  by  any 
particular  distinction  of  matter  or  manner. 
'  Tho'  his  opinions  are  generally  true,'  says  the 
critic  already  quoted,  '  and  his  regard  for  virtue 
seems  very  sincere,  yet  these  alone  are  not,  at 
this  day,  sufficient  to  defend  the  cause  of  truth  ; 
stile,  elegance,  and  all  the  allurements  of  good 
writing,  must  be  called  in  aid  :  especially  if  the 
age  be  in  reality,  as  it  is  represented  by  this 
Author,  averse  to  everything  that  but  seems  to 
be  serious.'  '  Novelty  of  thought,'  he  says 
again,  '  and  elegance  of  expression,  are  what 
we  chiefly  require,  in  treating  on  topics  with 
which  the  public  are  already  acquainted  :  but 
the  art  of  placing  trite  materials  in  new  and 
striking  lights,  cannot  be  reckoned  among  the 
excellencies  of  this  Gentleman  ;  who  generally 
enforces  his  opinions  by  arguments  rather  ob- 


Hmvway's  Travels.  89 

vious  than  new,   and  that  convey  more  con- 
viction than  pleasure  to  the  Reader.' 

Why,  with  the  book  before  us,  we  should 
borrow  from  an  anonymous  writer  in  the 
'  Monthly  Review,'  requires  a  word  of  explana- 
tion. The  reviewer  was  Oliver  Goldsmith, 
at  this  time  an  unknown  scribbler,  working  as 
'general  utility  man  '  to  Mr.  Ralph  Griffiths  the 
bookseller,  who  owned  the  magazine.  Gold- 
smith devotes  most  of  his  notice  to  the  '  Essay 
on  Tea,'  the  scope  of  which  is  sufficiently  indi- 
cated by  its  title.  But  the  '  Essay  on  Tea ' 
also  engaged  the  attention  of  a  better  known 
though  not  greater  critic,  Samuel  Johnson, 
whose  '  corruption  was  raised '  (as  the  Scotch 
say)  by  this  bulky  if  not  weighty  indictment 
of  his  darling  beverage.  Johnson's  critique 
was  in  the  '  Literary  Magazine.'  At  the  out- 
set he  makes  candid  and  characteristic  profes- 
sion of  faith.  '  He  is,'  he  says,  'a  hardened 
and  shameless  Tea-drinker,  who  has  for  twenty 
years  diluted  his  meals  with  only  the  infu- 
sion of  this  fascinating  plant,  whose  kettle  has 
scarcely  time  to  cool,  who  with  Tea  amuses 
the  evening,  with  Tea  solaces  the  midnight,  and 
with  Tea  welcomes  the  morning.'  The  argu- 
ments, on  either  side,  are  now  of  little  moment, 
though  Hanway,  as  a  merchant,  is  better  worth 


90         Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

hearing  on  the  commercial  aspect  of  the  Tea 
question  than  on  things  in  general.  But  the 
review  greatly  irritated  him.  An  unfortunate 
remark  dropped  by  Johnson  about  the  religious 
education  of  the  children  in  the  Foundling 
stung  him  into  an  angry  retort  in  the  '  Gazetteer,' 
—  a  retort  to  which  (according  to  Boswell) 
Johnson  made  the  only  rejoinder  he  is  ever 
known  to  have  offered  to  anything  that  was 
written  against  him.  As  may  be  expected,  it 
was  not  a  document  from  which  his  opponent 
could  extract  much  personal  gratification ;  but 
it  is  not  otherwise  remarkable. 

That  the  criticism  of  Johnson  and  Goldsmith 
was  not  wholly  undeserved  must,  it  is  feared,  be 
conceded.  Even  in  days  less  book-burdened, 
and  more  patient  of  tedium  than  our  own,  to 
string  half  a  dozen  pamphlets  of  platitudes  upon 
the  slenderest  of  threads,  and  call  it  the  '  Journal 
of  a  Journey  from  Portsmouth  to  Kingston- 
upon-Thames,'  could  scarcely  have  been  toler- 
able. Yet  Johnson  allowed  to  the  author  the 
'  merit  of  meaning  well.'  Hanway's  benevo- 
lence was,  in  truth,  unquestioned.  His  sincerity 
was  beyond  suspicion,  and  his  services  to  his 
fellow-creatures  were  considerable.  His  mis- 
fortune was  that,  like  many  excellent  persons, 
his  sense  of  humour  was  imperfect,  and  his  in- 


Hanway's  Travels.  91 

firmity  of  digression  chronic.  He  was,  more- 
over, the  victim  of  the  common  delusion  that  to 
teach  and  to  preach  are  interchangeable  terms. 
His  biographer  Pugh,  who  admits  that,  with  all 
his  good  qualities,  he  had  a  '  certain  singularity 
of  thought  and  manners,'  gives  some  curious 
details  as  to  his  habits  and  costume.  In  order 
to  be  always  ready  for  polite  society,  he  usu- 
ally appeared  in  dress  clothes,  including  a  large 
French  bag  (which  duly  figures  in  Wale's  fron- 
tispiece) and  a  chapeau  bras  with  a  gold  button. 
*  When  it  rained,  a  small  parapluie  defended  his 
face  and  wig.'  His  customary  garb  was  a  suit 
of  rich  dark  brown,  lined  with  ermine,  to  which 
he  added  a  small  gold-hilted  sword.  He  was  ex- 
tremely susceptible  to  cold,  and  habitually  wore 
three  pairs  of  stockings.  He  was  an  active 
pedestrian,  although  he  possessed  an  equipage 
called  a  '  solo  '  (which  we  take  to  be  the  equiva- 
lent of  Sterne's  Disobligeante).  Among  his  other 
characteristics  was  the  embellishment  of  his 
house  in  Red  Lion  Square  in  such  a  way  as  to 
prompt  and  promote  improving  conversation  in 
those  unhappy  intermissions  of  talk  which  come 
about  while  the  card-tables  are  being  set,  and  so 
forth.  The  decorations  in  the  drawing-room 
were  not  without  a  certain  mildly-moral  inge- 
nuity.    They  consisted  of  portraits  of  Adrienne 


92  Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

Le  Couvreur  and  five  other  famous  beauties,  in 
frames  united  by  a  carved  and  gilded  ribbon 
inscribed  vi^ith  passages  in  praise  of  beauty. 
Above  these  was  placed  a  statue  of  Humility ; 
below,  a  mirror  just  convex  enough  to  reduce  the 
female  spectator  to  the  scale  of  the  portraits, 
and  round  the  frame  of  this  was  painted,  — 

•  Wert  thou,  my  daughter,  fairest  of  the  seven  ; 
Think  on  the  progress  of  devouring  Time, 
And  pay  thy  tribute  to  Humility/ 

Hanway  died  in  1786,  aged  seventy-four. 
He  is  buried  at  Hanwell,  and  he  has  a  bust 
in  Westminster  Abbey. 


A  GARRET   IN   GOUGH    SQUARE. 

"MOT  very  far  from  *  streaming  London's 
-*■*  central  roar*  — or,  in  plain  words,  about 
midway  in  Fleet  Street,  on  the  left-hand  side  as 
you  go  toward  Ludgate  Hill  —  is  a  high  and 
narrow  archway  or  passage  over  which  is  painted 
in  dingy  letters  the  words  '  Bolt  Court.'  To  the 
lover  of  the  '  Great  Cham  of  Literature,'  the 
name  comes  freighted  with  memories.  More 
than  a  hundred  years  ago  '  the  ponderous  mass 
of  Johnson's  form,'  to  quote  a  poem  by  Mrs. 
Barbauld,  must  often  have  darkened  that  con- 
tracted approach,  when,  in  order  to  greet  with 
tea  the  coming  day  {^  veniente  die''),^  and  to 
postpone  if  possible  that  '  unseasonable  hour  at 
which  he  had  habituated  himself  to  expect  the 
oblivion  of  repose,'  he  rolled  across  from  the 
Temple  to  Miss  Williams's  rooms.  Where 
the  blind  lady  lodged,  no  Society  of  Arts  tablet 
now  reveals  to  us  ;  but  as  soon  as  the  pilgrim 
has  traversed  the  dark  and  greasy  entrance-way, 

1  '  Te    veniente  die,    te  decedente    canebat.'  —  Georg. 
iv.  466. 


94  Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

and  finds  himself  in  the  little  court  itself,  with 
its  disorderly  huddle  of  buildings,  and  confusion 
of  tip-cat  playing  children,  he  is  in  Johnson's 
land,  and  only  a  few  steps  from  the  actual  spot 
on  which  Johnson's  last  hours  were  spent. 
Fronting  him,  in  the  farther  angle  of  the  enclo- 
sure, is  the  Stationers'  Company's  School,  and 
the  Stationers'  Company's  School  stands  upon 
the  site  of  No.  8  Bolt  Court,  formerly  Bensley's 
Printing  Office,^  but  earlier  still  the  last  residence 
of  Dr.  Johnson,  who  lived  in  it  from  1776  to 
1784.  It  was  in  the  back-room  of  its  first  floor 
that,  on  Monday,  the  13th  December  in  the 
latter  year,  at  about  seven  o'clock  in  the  even- 
ing, his  black  servant  Francis  Barber  and  his 
friend  Mrs.  Desmoulins,  who  watched  in  the 
sick-chamber,  *  observing  that  the  noise  he 
made  in  breathing  had  ceased,  went  to  the  bed, 
and  found  that  he  was  dead.' 

^  Bensley  succeeded  Allen  the  printer,  Johnson's  land- 
lord. During  Bensley's  tenancy  of  the  house  it  was 
twice  the  scene  of  disastrous  fires,  by  the  second  of 
which  (in  June,  1819)  the  Doctor's  old  rooms  were  entirely 
destroyed.  Among  other  valuables  burned  at  Bensley's 
was  the  large  wood  block  engraved  by  Bewick's  pupil, 
Luke  Clennell,  for  the  diploma  of  the  Highland  Society ; 
and  the  same  artist's  cuts  after  Stothard  for  Rogers's 
'  Pleasures  of  Memory  '  of  iSio,  were  only  saved  from  a 
like  fate  by  being  kept  in  a  '  ponderous  iron  chest.' 


A  Garret  in  Gougb  Square.  95 

Standing  in  Bolt  Court  to-day,  before  the 
unimposing  facade  of  the  school  which  now  oc- 
cupies the  spot,  it  is  not  easy  to  reconstruct 
that  quiet  parting-scene  ;  nor  is  it  easy  to  realize 
the  old  book-burdened  upper  floors,  or  the 
lower  reception  chamber,  where,  according  to 
Sir  John  Hawkins,  were  given  those  '  not  in- 
elegant dinners '  of  the  good  Doctor's  more 
opulent  later  years.  Least  of  all  is  it  possible 
to  conceive  that,  somewhere  in  this  pell-mell  of 
bricks  and  mortar,  was  once  a  garden  which  the 
famous  Lexicographer  took  pleasure  in  water- 
ing ;  and  where,  moreover,  grew  a  vine  from 
which,  only  a  few  months  before  he  died,  he 
gathered  *  three  bunches  of  grapes.'  But  if 
Bolt  Court  prove  unstimulating,  you  have  only 
to  take  a  few  steps  to  the  right,  and  you  arrive, 
somewhat  unexpectedly,  in  a  little  parallelo- 
gram at  the  back,  known  as  Gough  Square. 
Here  —  in  the  northwest  corner  —  still  stands 
one  of  the  last  of  those  sixteen  residences  in 
which  Johnson  lived  in  London.  It  is  at  present 
a  place  of  business  ;  but  the  tenants  make  no 
difficulty  about  your  examination  of  it,  and  when 
you  inquire  for  the  well-known  garret  you  are 
at  once  invited  to  inspect  it.  The  interior  of 
the  house,  of  course,  is  much  altered,  but  there 
is  still  a  huge  chain  at  the  front  door,  which 


96         Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

dates  from  Johnson's  day,  and  the  old  oak- 
balustraded  staircase  remains  intact.  As  you 
climb  its  narrow  stages,  you  remember  'that, 
sixty  years  since,  Thomas  Carlyle  must  have 
made  that  ascent  before  you  ;  ^  and  you  wonder 
how  Johnson,  with  his  bad  sight  and  his  rolling 
gait,  managed  to  steer  up  it  at  all.  The  flight 
ends  in  the  garret  itself,  upon  which  you  emerge 
at  present,  as  in  a  hay-loft.  But  it  is  not  in  the 
least  such  a  '  sky-parlour '  as  Hogarth  assigns  to 
his  '  Distressed  Poet.'  It  occupies  the  whole 
width  and  breadth  of  the  building ;  it  is  suffi- 
ciently lighted  by  three  windows  in  front,  and 
two  dormers  at  the  sides  ;  and  the  pitch  of  the 
roof  is  by  no  means  low.  Here  you  are  act- 
ually in  Johnson's  house  ;  and  as  you  turn  to 
look  at  the  stairway  you  have  just  quitted,  it  is 
odds  if  you  do  not  expect  to  see  the  shrivelled 
wig,  the  seared,  blinking  face,  and  the  heavy 
shoulders  of  the  Doctor  himself  rising  slowly 
above  the  aperture  with  a  huge  volume  under 
his  arm.  For  it  was  in  this  very  garret  in 
Gough  Square,  within  sound  of  the  hammers  of 
that  famous  clock  of  St.  Dunstan's,  to  which 
Cowper  refers  in  the  '  Connoisseur,'  that  the 
great  Dictionary  was  compiled.    Here  laboured 

1  He  visited  it  in   1831   (Froude's   'Carlyle/  vol.    ii 
ch.  x.i. 


A  Garret  in  Gough  Square.  97 

Shiels,  the  amanuensis,  and  his  five  com- 
panions, ceaselessly  transcribing  the  passages 
which  had  been  marked  for  them  to  copy,  and 
probably  going  '  odd  man  or  plain  Newmarket ' 
for  beer  as  soon  as  ever  their  employer's  back 
was  turned  ;  here,  also,  at  the  little  fire-place 
in  the  corner,  must  often  have  sat  Johnson  him- 
self, peering  closely  (much  as  Reynolds  shows 
him  in  the  portrait  of  1778)  at  the  proofs  that 
were  going  to  long-suffering  Andrew  Millar.  It 
was  in  this  identical  garret  that  Joseph  Warton 
once  visited  him  to  pay  a  subscription  ;  here 
came  Roublllac  and  Sir  Joshua  ;  and  here,  when 
the  room  had  grown  to  be  dignified  by  the  title 
of  the  '  library,'  Johnson  received  Dr.  Burney, 
who  found  in  it  '  five  or  six  Greek  folios,  a  deal 
writing-desk,  and  a  chair  and  a  half.'  The  half- 
chair  must  have  been  that  mentioned  by  Miss 
Reynolds  ;  and  it  is  evident  that  long  experi- 
ence or  repeated  misadventure  had  made  John- 
son both  skilful  and  cautious  in  manipulating  it. 
'  A  gentleman,'  she  says,  '  who  frequently  visited 
him  whilst  writing  his  '  Idlers"  [the  '  Idler' 
was  partly  composed  in  Gough  Square  in  1758] 
constantly  found  him  at  his  desk,  sitting  on  a 
chair  with  three  legs  ;  and  on  rising  from  it,  he 
remarked  that  Dr.  Johnson  never  forgot  its  de- 
fect, but  would  either  hold  it  in  his  hand  or  place 
7 


98         Eighteenth  Century  Fignettes, 

it  with  great  composure  against  some  support, 
taking  no  notice  of  its  imperfection  to  his 
visitor.'  *  It  was  remarkable  in  Dr.  Johnson/ 
she  goes  on,  '  that  no  external  circumstances 
ever  prompted  him  to  make  any  apology,  or  to 
seem  even  sensible  of  their  existence.' 

In  Gough  Square  Johnson  lived  from  1749  to 
1759.  'I  have  this  day  moved  my  things,'  he 
writes  to  his  step-daughter.  Miss  Porter,  on  the 
23rd  of  March  in  the  latter  year,  '  and  you  are 
now  to  direct  to  me  at  Staple  Inn.'  These  ten 
years  were  among  the  busiest  and  most  produc- 
tive of  his  life.  No  pension  had  as  yet  made 
existence  easier  to  him  ;  no  Boswell  was  at  hand 
to  seduce  him  to  port  and  the  Mitre ;  and  the 
Literary  Club,  as  yet  unborn,  existed  only  in 
embryo  at  a  beefsteak  shop  in  Ivy  Lane.  Be- 
sides the  '  Idler '  and  the  Dictionary,  which 
latter  was  published  in  the  middle  of  his  sojourn 
at  Gough  Square,  he  sent  forth  from  his  garret 

*  Irene '  and  the  '  Vanity  of  Human  Wishes,'  the 

*  Rambler,'  and   the  essays  in  Hawkesworth's 

*  Adventurer.'  It  was  here  that  he  drew  up 
those  proposals  for  that  belated  edition  of 
Shakespeare  of  which  Churchill  said : 

He  for  Subscribers  baits  his  hook, 

And  takes  their  cash  —  but  where  's  the  Book? 


A  Garret  in  Gough  Square.  99 

and  here,  early  in  1759,  he  wrote  his  *  Rasselas.' 
It  was  in  Gough  Square,  on  the  i6th  of  March, 
1756,  that  he  was  arrested  for  ;!^5  185.,  and  only 
released  by  a  prompt  loan  from  Samuel  Richard- 
son ;  it  was  while  living  in  Gough  Square  that 
he  penned  that  noble  letter  to  Chesterfield,  of 
which  Time  seems  to  intensify  rather  than  to 
attenuate  the  dignity  and  the  independent  ac- 
cent. '  Is  not  a  Patron,  my  Lord,  one  who 
looks  with  unconcern  on  a  man  struggling  for  life 
in  the  water,  and,  when  he  has  reached  ground, 
encumbers  him  with  help  ?  The  notice  which 
you  have  been  pleased  to  take  of  my  labours,  had 
it  been  early,  had  been  kind  ;  but  it  has  been  de- 
layed till  I  am  indifferent,  and  cannot  enjoy  it ; 
till  I  am  solitary,  and  cannot  impart  it ;  till  I  am 
known,  and  do  not  want  it.  I  hope  it  is  no 
very  cynical  asperity  not  to  confess  obligations 
where  no  benefit  has  been  received,  or  to  be 
unwilling  that  the  Publick  should  consider  me 
as  owing  that  to  a  Patron,  which  Providence 
has  enabled  me  to  do  for  myself.' 

*  Till  I  am  solitary,  and  cannot  impart  it.* 
The  same  thought  recurs  in  the  closing  words 
of  the  preface  to  his  magnum  opus,  which,  little 
more  than  two  months  after  the  date  of  the 
above  letter,  appeared  in  a  pair  of  folio  vol- 
umes.    '  I  have  protracted  my  work  till  most  of 


lOO        Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

those  whom  I  wished  to  please  have  sunk  into 
the  grave  ;  and  success  and  miscarriage  are  empty 
sounds.'  It  needs  no  Boswell  to  tell  us  that 
the  reference  here  is  to  the  death,  three  years 
before,  of  his  wif^, — that  fantastic  'Tetty,'  to 
himself  so  beautiful,  to  his  friends  so  unattrac- 
tive, whom  he  loved  so  ardently  and  so  faith- 
fully, and  whose  name,  coupled  with  so  many 

*  pious  breathings,'  is  so  frequently  to  be  found 
in  his  '  Prayers  and  Meditations.'  'This  is  the 
day,'  he  wrote,  thirty  years  afterwards,  *  on 
which,  in  I7)2,  dear  Tetty  died.  I  have  now 
uttered  a  prayer  of  repentance  and  contrition  ; 
perhaps  Tetty  knows  that  I  prayed  for  her.  Per- 
haps Tetty  is  now  praying  for  me.  God  help  me.' 
In  her  epitaph  at  Bromley  he  styles  her  '■  for- 
mosa,  culla,  ingeniosa,  pia.'  In  a  recently  dis- 
covered letter  she  is  his  *  charming  Love,'  his 

*  most  amiable  woman  in  the  world,'  and  (even 
at  fifty)  his  *  dear  Girl.'  He  preserved  her 
wedding  ring,  says  Boswell,  '  as  long  as  he 
lived,  with  an  affectionate  care,  in  a  little  round 
wooden  box,  in  the  inside  of  which  he  pasted 
a  slip  of  paper,  thus  inscribed  by  him  in  fair 
characters,  as  follows  :  '  Eheu  I  Eli:{.  Johnson, 
Nupta  Jul.  p°  i7j<$,  Mortua,  eheu !  Mart.  iy° 
7752.'  Her  loss  was  not  the  only  bereavement 
he  suffered  in  Gough  Square.     Two  months  be- 


A  Garret  in  Gough  Square.         loi 

fore  he  left  it,  in  1759,  his  mother  died  at  Lich- 
field, — '  one  of  the  few  calamities,'  he  had  told 
Lucy  Porter,  '  on  which  he  thought  with  terror.' 
Confined  to  London  by  his  work,  he  was  not 
able  to  close  her  eyes ;  but  he  wrote  to  her  a 
last  letter  almost  too  sacred  in  its  wording  for 
the  profanation  of  type,  and  he  consecrated  an 
•Idler'  to  her  memory.  'The  last  year,  the 
last  day,  must  come,'  he  says  mournfully.  '  It 
has  come,  and  is  past.  The  life  which  made  my 
own  life  pleasant  is  at  an  end,  and  the  gates  of 
death  are  shut  upon  my  prospects.'  To  pay  his 
mother's  modest  debts,  and  to  cover  the  ex- 
penses of  her  funeral,  he  penned  his  sole  ap- 
proach to  a  work  of  fiction,  —  the  story  of 
'  Rasselas.' 

Who  now  reads  Johnson  ?    If  he  pleases  still, 
'T  is  most  for  Dormitive  or  Sleeping  Pill,  — 

one  might  say,  in  not  inappropriate  parody  of 
Pope.  His  strong  individuality,  his  intellectual 
authority,  his  conversational  power,  must  live 
for  ever  ;  but  his  books  1  —  who,  outside  the 
fanatics  of  literature,  —  who  reads  them  now  .'' 
Macaulay,  we  are  told  by  Lord  Houghton,  once 
quoted  *  London '  at  a  dinner-table,  but  then  he 
was  talking  to  Dean  Milman  ;  and  Dr.  Oliver 
Wendell  Holmes,  in  his  novel  of  '  A  Mortal 


I02       Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

Antipathy,'  refers  to  the  Prince  of  Abyssinia. 
Browning,  says  Mrs.  Sutherland  Orr,  qualified 
himself  for  poetry  in  his  youth  by  a  diligent 
perusal  of  the  Dictionary ;  and  it  may  perhaps 
be  said  of  him,  in  those  words  of  Horace  which 
Johnson  himself  applied  to  Prior,  that  *  the 
vessel  long  retained  the  scent  which  it  first  re- 
ceived.' But  who  now,  among  the  supporters 
of  the  circulating  libraries,  ever  gets  out  the 
'  Rambler,'  or  '  Irene,'  or  the  '  Vanity  of  Human 
Wishes  '  (beloved  of  Scott  and  Byron),  or  '  Ras- 
selas,'  —  *  Rasselas,'  once  more  popular  than 
the  '  Vicar  of  Wakefield,'  *  —  '  Rasselas,'  which, 
despite  such  truisms  as  *  What  cannot  be  re- 
paired is  not  to  be  regretted,'  is  full  of  sagacious 
'  criticism  of  life '  I  The  honest  answer  must  be, 
*  Very  few.'  Yet  a  day  may  come  when  the 
Johnsonese  of  Johnson's  imitators  will  be  for- 
gotten, and  people  will  turn  once  more  to  the 
fountain-head  to  find,  with  surprise,  that  it  is 
not  so  polluted  with  Latinisms  after  all,  and  that 
it  abounds  in  passages  direct  and  forcible.  '  Of 
all  the  writings  which  are  models,'  says  Profes- 
sor Earle,  '  models  I  mean  in  the  highest  sense 

*  Of  an  illustrated  edition  of  the  '  Vicar '  published  at 
the  end  of  1890,  we  are  credibly  informed  that  8,000 
copies  were  sold  within  a  twelvemonth.  And  where  is 
'Rasselas'  now? 


A  Garret  in  Gough  Square.  103 

of  the  word,  models  from  which  the  spirit  of 
genuine  true  and  wholesome  diction  is  to  be 
imbibed  (not  models  of  mannerism  of  which 
the  trick  or  fashion  is  to  be  caught),  I  have  no 
hesitation  in  saying  that  there  is  one  author 
unapproachably  and  incomparably  the  best,  and 
that  is  Samuel  Johnson.'  And  this  is  the  *  de- 
liberate conclusion '  of  an  expert  who  has  given 
almost  a  lifetime  to  the  comparative  study  of 
English  prose. 


HOGARTH'S   SIGISMUNDA. 

n^OWARDS  the  close  of  the  last  century,  the 
regular  attendants  upon  the  ministrations 
of  the  Rev.  James  Trebeck  in  the  picturesque 
old  church  at  the  end  of  Chiswick  Mall,  must 
often  have  witnessed  the  arrival  of  a  well-known 
member  of  the  congregation.  Year  after  year 
had  been  wheeled  in  a  Bath  chair  from  her  little 
villa  under  the  wing  of  the  Duke  of  Devon- 
shire's mansion  hard  by,  a  stately  old  lady  be- 
tween seventy  and  eighty  years  of  age,  whose 
habitual  costume  was  a  silk  sacque,  a  raised 
head-dress,  and  a  black  calash.  Leaning  heavily 
upon  her  crutched  cane,  and  aided  by  the  arm 
of  a  portly  female  relative  in  similar  attire,  she 
would  make  her  way  slowly  and  with  much 
dignity  up  the  nave,  being  generally  preceded 
by  a  bent  and  white-haired  man-servant,  who, 
after  carrying  the  prayer-books  into  the  pew, 
and  carefully  closing  the  door  upon  his  mistress 
and  her  companion,  would  himself  retire  to  a 
remoter  part  of  the  building.  From  the  fre- 
quenters of  the  place,  the  little   procession  at- 


Hogarth's  Sigismunda.  105 

tracted  no  more  notice  than  any  other  recog- 
nized ceremonial,  of  which  the  intermission 
would  alone  have  been  remarkable  ;  but  it  sel- 
dom failed  to  excite  the  curiosity  of  those  way- 
farers who,  under  the  third  George,  already 
sought  reverently,  along  the  pleasant  riverside, 
for  that  house  in  Mawson's  Buildings  where  the 
great  Mr.  Pope  wrote  part  of  his  *  Iliad,'  or  for 
the  garden  of  Richard,  Earl  of  Burlington, 
where  idle  John  Gay  gorged  himself  with  apri- 
cots and  peaches.  They  would  be  told  that  the 
elder  lady  was  the  widow  of  the  famous  painter, 
"William  Hogarth,  who  lay  buried  under  the  tea- 
caddy-like  tomb  in  the  neighbouring  churchyard  ; 
that  her  companion  was  her  cousin,  Mary  Lewis, 
in  whose  arms  he  died ;  and  that  the  old  ser- 
vant's name  was  Samuel.  For  five  and  twenty 
years  Mrs.  Hogarth  survived  her  husband,  dur- 
ing all  of  which  time  she  faithfully  cherished  his 
memory.  Those  who  visited  her  at  her  Chis- 
wick  home  (for  she  had  another  in  Leicester 
Fields)  would  recall  with  what  tenacity  she  was 
wont  to  combat  the  view  that  he  was  a  mere 
maker  of  caricatura,  or,  at  best,  '  a  writer  of 
comedy  with  the  pencil,'  as  Mr.  Horace  Wal- 
pole  (whose  over-critical  book  she  had  not  even 
condescended  to  acknowledge)  had  thought  fit 
to  designate  him.     It  was  as  a  painter  pure  and 


io6       Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

simple,  as  a  rival  of  the  Guides  and  Correggios, 
that  she  mainly  valued  her  William.  '  They 
said  he  could  not  colour  1 '  she  would  cry,  point- 
ing, it  may  be,  as  a  protest  against  the  words, 
to  the  brilliant  sketch  of  the  'Shrimp  Girl,'  now 
in  the  National  Gallery,  but  then  upon  her 
walls.  Or,  turning  from  his  merits  to  his  mem- 
ory, she  would  throw  a  shawl  about  her  hand- 
some head,  and,  stepping  out  under  the  over- 
hanging bay-window  into  the  old  three-cornered 
garden  with  its  filbert  avenue  and  its  great 
mulberry  tree,  would  exhibit  the  little  mural 
tablet  which  Hogarth  had  himself  scratched  with 
a  nail,  in  remembrance  of  a  favourite  bullfinch. 
•  Mass  poor  Dick,'  ran  the  now  faint  inscription, 
not  without  characteristic  revelation  of  the 
sculptor's  faulty  spelling.  And  if  she  happened 
to  be  in  one  of  the  more  confidential  moods  of 
old  age,  she  would  perhaps  take  from  a  drawer 
that  very  No.  17  of  the  '  North  Briton,'  stained 
and  frayed  at  the  folds,  which  she  afterwards 
gave  to  Ireland,  and  which  her  husband,  she 
would  tell  you,  had  carried  about  in  his  pocket 
for  days  to  show  to  sympathetic  friends.  '  The 
supposed  Author  of  the  Analysis  of  Beauly ! '  — 
she  would  indignantly  exclaim,  quoting  from  the 
opening  lines  of  Wilkes's  nefarious  print,  headed 
with  its  rude  woodcut  parody  of  Hogarth's  por- 


Hogarth's  Sigismunda.  107 

trait  in  '  Calais  Gate,'  ^  and  then,  turning  the 
blunt-lettered  page,  she  would  point  silently 
to  the  passages  relating  to  the  much-abused 
*  Sigismunda,'  concerning  which,  if  her  hearers 
were  still  judiciously  inquisitive,  they  would, 
in  all  probability,  receive  a  gracious  invitation 
to  test  the  truth  of  the  libel  by  inspecting  that 
masterpiece  itself  at  its  home  in  her  London 
house. 

By  November,  1789,  however,  all  this  had 
become  part  of  the  irrevocable  past.  In  that 
month  Mrs.  Hogarth  had  been  laid  beside  her 
mother  and  her  husband  under  the  tomb  in  Chis- 
wick  churchyard  ;  the  little  '  country  box '  had 
passed  to  Mary  Lewis  ;  and  —  by  direction  of  the 
same  lady  —  the  contents  of  the  '  Golden  Head  ' 

1  The  original  No.  17  of  the  '  North  Briton,'  dated 
Saturday,  September  25,  1762,  had  no  portrait.  The 
portrait  was  added  to  a  reprint  of  Wilkes's  article  issued 
May  21,  1763,  or  immediately  after  the  appearance  of  Ho- 
garth's etching  of  Wilkes.  Since  the  above  paper  was  first 
published  in  America,  this  interesting  relic  of  Hogarth  has 
once  more  come  to  light.  In  April,  1845,  it  was  sold  with 
Mr.  H.  P.  Standly's  collection.  At  the  sale,  in  February, 
1892,  of  Dr.  J.  R.  Joly's  Hogarth  prints  and  books,  it 
passed  (with  some  of  the  Standly  correspondence)  to 
Mr.  James  Tregaskis,  the  well-known  bookseller  at  the 
'  Caxton  Head  '  in  Holborn,  from  whom  it  was  acquired 
by  the  present  writer. 


io8       Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

in  Leicester  Square  were  shortly  afterwards 
(April,  1790)  announced  for  sale.  In  the  Print- 
Room  at  the  British  Museum,  where  is  also  the 
original  manuscript  of  the  famous  '  Five  Days' 
Tour' of  1732,  is  a  copy  of  the  auctioneer's 
catalogue,  which  once  belonged  to  George 
Steevens.  It  is  not  a  document  of  many  pages. 
At  Mrs.  Hogarth's  death,  her  income  from  the 
prints,  exclusive  property  in  which  had  been 
secured  to  her  in  1767  by  special  Act  of  Parlia- 
ment, had  greatly  fallen  off ;  and  though  she 
had  received  the  further  aid  of  a  small  pension 
from  the  Royal  Academy,  it  is  to  be  presumed 
that  her  means  were  considerably  straitened. 
It  is  known,  too,  that  there  had  been  lodgers 
at  the  '  Golden  Head,'  one  being  the  engraver 
Richard  Livesay,  another  the  strange  Ossianic 
enthusiast  and  friend  of  Fuseli,  Alexander  Run- 
ciman ;  and  obviously  nothing  but  *  strong  ne- 
cessity '  could  justify  the  reception  of  lodgers. 
These  circumstances  must  explain  the  slender 
contents  of  Mr.  Greenwood's  little  pamphlet. 
Many  of  the  treasures  of  William  Hogarth's 
household  had  already  become  the  prey  of  the 
collector,  or  had  passed  to  admiring  friends  ; 
and  what  remained  to  be  finally  dispersed  under 
the  hammer  practically  consisted  of  family  relics. 
There  was  Hogarth's  own  likeness  of  himself 


Hogarth's  Sigismunda.  109 

and  his  dog,  soon  to  become  the  property  of 
Mr.  Angerstein,  from  whom  it  passed  to  the 
National  Gallery ;  there  was  another  whole- 
length  painting  of  him ;  there  was  Roubillac's 
clever  terra  cotta,  at  present  in  the  St.  Martin's 
Place  collection  of  portraits ;  there  was  a  cast 
of  the  faithful  Trump,  and  one  of  Hogarth's 
hand  ;  there  were  the  portraits  of  his  sisters 
Mary  and  Ann,  which  now  belong  to  Mr.  R.  C. 
Nichols.  Other  items  were  a  set  of  '  twelve 
Delft  ware  plates,'  painted  with  the  signs  of  the 
zodiac  by  Sir  James  Thornhill ;  portraits  of  Sir 
James  and  his  wife  ;  of  Mrs.  Hogarth  herself; 
of  Hogarth's  six  servants  ;  and  there  were  also 
numerous  framed  examples  of  his  prints.^  But 
the  most  important  object  in  the  sale  was  un- 
doubtedly the  famous   '  Sigismunda.' 

'  Sigismunda  Mourning  over  the  Heart  of 
Guiscardo '  is  the  full  title  of  the  picture  in  the 
National  Gallery  catalogue.  As  one  looks  at 
it  now,  asylumed  safely,  post  tot  discrimina,  in 
Trafalgar  Square,  it  is  not  so  much  its  qualities 
as  its  story  that  it  recalls.  How  much  heart- 
burning, how  much  bitterness,  would  have  been 
saved  to  its  sturdy  little  '  Author,'  as  he  loved 
to  style  himself,  if  it  had  never  been  projected  1 

^  By  a  piece  of  unconscious  auction-room  humour, '  The 
Bathos '  appears  as  '  The  Bathers.' 


no        Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

He  was  an  unparalleled  pictorial  satirist ;  he 
was,  and  still  is,  an  unsurpassed  story-teller 
upon  canvas. 

*  In  walks  of  Humour,  in  that  cast  of  Style, 
Which,  probing  to  the  quick,  yet  makes  us  smile  ; 
In  Comedy,  thy  nat'ral  road  to  fame. 
Nor  let  me  call  it  by  a  meaner  name. 
Where  a  beginning,  middle,  and  an  end 
Are  aptly  joined ;  where  parts  on  parts  depend. 
Each  made  for  each,  as  bodies  for  their  soul, 
So  as  to  form  one  true  and  perfect  whole. 
Where  a  plain  story  to  the  eye  is  told. 
Which  we  conceive  the  moment  we  behold, 
Hogarth  unrivall'd  stands,  and  shall  engage 
Unrivall'd  praise  to  the  most  distant  age  ' 

Thus  even  his  enemy  and  assailant,  Charles 
Churchill.  But  Hogarth  had  the  misfortune  to 
live  in  an  age  when  Art  was  given  over  to  the 
bubblemongers  and  *  black  masters  ; '  when,  to 
the  suppression  of  native  talent,  sham  chefs 
d'ceuvre  were  praised  extravagantly  by  sham 
connoisseurs  ;  and  the  patriotic  painter  of  '  Mar- 
riage A-la-Mode'  justly  resented  the  invasion  of 
the  country  by  the  rubbish  of  the  Roman  art- 
factories.  Had  he  confined  himself  to  the  for- 
cible indignation  of  which,  as  an  impenitent 
islander,  he  possessed  unlimited  command,  it 
would  have  been  better  for  his  peace  of  mind. 
But,  in  an  unpropitious  hour,  he  undertook  to 


Hogarth's  Sigismunda.  iii 

prove  his  case  by  demonstration.  Among  the 
pictures  from  Sir  Luke  Schaub's  collection, 
offered  for  sale  in  1758,  was  a  *  Sigismunda,' 
attributed  to  Correggio,  but  in  reality  from  the 
brush  of  the  far  inferior  artist,  Furini.  It  was 
recklessly  run  up  by  the  virtuosi,  and  was  finally 
bought  in  for  over  ^400.  Hogarth,  whose 
inimitable  *  Marriage  '  had  fetched  only  £\2(> 
(frames  included),  determined  to  paint  the  same 
subject.  He  had  an  open  commission  from  Sir 
Richard  Grosvenor,  a  wealthy  art-collector,  who 
had  been  one  of  the  bidders  for  the  Furini,  and 
he  set  to  work.  He  took  unusual  pains  —  a 
thing  which,  in  his  case,  was  of  evil  augury ; 
and  he  modified  the  details  of  his  design  again 
and  again,  in  obedience  to  the  suggestions  of 
friends.  When  at  last  the  picture  was  com- 
pleted. Sir  Richard,  who,  perhaps  not  unreason- 
ably, had  looked  for  something  more  in  the 
artist's  individual  manner,  took  advantage  of 
Hogarth's  conventional  offer  to  release  him  from 
his  bargain,  and  rather  shabbily  withdrew  from 
it  upon  the  specious  ground  '  that  the  constantly 
having  it  [the  picture]  before  one's  eyes  would 
be  too  often  occasioning  melancholy  ideas '  — 
a  sentiment  which  the  irritated  painter,  calling 
verse  to  his  relief,  afterwards  neatly  paraphrased. 
Admitting  its  power  to  touch  the  heart  to  be  the 


112        Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

*  truest    test '   of    a   masterpiece,    he    says    of 

*  Sigismunda ' : 

'  Nay ,  't  is  so  moving  that  the  Knight 
Can't  even  bear  it  in  his  sight ; 
Then  who  would  tears  so  dearly  buy, 
As  give  four  hundred  pounds  to  cry  ? 
I  own,  he  chose  the  prudent  part, 
Rather  to  break  his  word  than  heart  ; 
And  yet,  methinks,  't  is  ticklish  dealing 
With  one  so  delicate  —  in  feeling ' 

As  a  result  of  Sir  Richard  Grosvenor's  action, 
the  picture  remained  on  the  artist's  hands,  —  a 
source  of  continual  mortification  to  himself,  and 
a  fruitful  theme  of  discussion  to  both  his  friends 
and  enemies.  The  political  caricaturists  got 
hold  of  it,  and  used  it  as  a  stick  to  beat  the  pen- 
sionary of  Lord  Bute  ;  the  critics  employed  it 
to  continue  their  assaults  on  the  precepts  of  the 

*  Analysis.'  "When  Wilkes  retorted  to  Hogarth's 
ill-advised  print  of  the  '  Times,'  he  openly  de- 
scribed '  Sigismunda  '  as  a  portrait  of  Mrs.  Ho- 
garth '  in  an  agony  of  passion  ;  '  and  the  fact  that 
she  had  served  as  her  husband's  model  was  not 
neglected  by  his  meaner  assailants.  Finally, 
after  various  attempts  had  been  made  to  en- 
grave it,  the  picture  was  left  by  the  artist  to  his 
widow  with  injunctions  not  to  sell  it  for  less 
than  ;^5oo.     After  her  death  it  was  bought  at 


Hogarth's  Sigismunda.  113 

the  '  Golden  Head  '  sale  for  £^6  by  Alderman 
Boydell.  As  already  stated,  it  is  now  in  the 
National  Gallery,  to  which  it  was  bequeathed 
by  the  late  Mr.  Anderdon  in   1879. 

In  the  couplets  already  quoted,  Hogarth  had 
ended  by  saying : 

'  Let  the  picture  rust. 
Perhaps  Time's  price-enhancing  dust, 
As  statues  moulder  into  earth, 
When  I  'm  no  more,  may  mark  its  worth; 
And  future  connoisseurs  may  rise, 
Honest  as  ours,  and  full  as  wise, 
To  puff  the  piece  and  painter  too, 
And  make  me  then  what  Guido  's  now.* 

To  some  extent  the  reaction  he  hoped  for  has 
arrived.  The  latter-day  student  of '  Sigismunda,' 
unblinded  by  political  prejudice  or  private  ani- 
mosity, renders  full  justice  to  the  soundness  of 
its  execution  and  the  undoubted  skill  of  its 
technique.  Indeed,  at  the  present  moment,  the 
tendency  seems  to  be  rather  to  overrate  than  to 
underrate  its  praiseworthy  qualities.  Yet,  when 
all  is  said,  the  subject  remains  an  unattractive  and 
even  a  repulsive  one.  It  must  be  admitted  also 
that,  in  one  respect,  contemporary  critics  were 
right.  They  were  wrong  in  their  unreasoning 
preference  for  doubtful  '  exotics,'  but  they  were 
right  in  their  contention  that,  upon  this  occasion, 
8 


114       Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

Hogarth  had  strayed  perilously  from  his  own 
peculiar  walk,  and  that  so-called  'history  paint- 
ing '  was  not  his  strongest  point.  Conscientious 
and  painstaking,  '  Sigismunda '  is  still  a  mistake, 
although  it  is  the  mistake  of  a  great  artist ;  and 
Hogarth's  recorded  partiality  for  it  affords  but 
one  more  example  of  that  unaccountable  blind- 
ness which  led  Addison  to  put  his  poems  before 
the  '  Spectator,'  Prior  to  rank  his  '  Solomon ' 
above  the  '  loose  and  hasty  scribble  '  of  'Alma,' 
and  Liston,  whose  nose  alone  was  provocative 
of  laughter,  to  cherish  the  extraordinary  delu- 
sion that  his  true  vocation  was  that  of  a  tragic 
actor. 


*THE   CITIZEN    OF   THE  WORLD.' 

ll  rHAT  was  it  that  suggested  to  Goldsmith 
*  '  '  The  Citizen  of  the  "World  '  ?  Biographers 
and  commentators  have  pointed  to  more  than 
one  plausible  model,  —  the  '  Lettres  Persanes  ' 
of  Montesquieu,  the  '  Lettres  d'une  Peruvienne' 
of  Madame  de  Graffigny,  the  '  Lettres  Chi- 
noises'  of  the  Marquis  d'Argens,  the  '  Asiatic  ' 
of  Voltaire's  '  Lettres  Philosophiques.'  But  it 
is  sometimes  wise,  especially  in  such  hand-to- 
mouth  work  as  journalism,  which  was  all  Gold- 
smith at  first  intended,  to  seek  for  origins  in  the 
immediate  neighbourhood  rather  than  in  remoter 
places.  In  1757  Horace  Walpole  published 
anonymously,  in  pamphlet  form,  a  clever  little 
squib  upon  Admiral  Byng's  trial  in  particular 
and  English  inconstancy  in  general,  which  he 
entitled  '  A  Letter  from  Xo  Ho,  a  Chinese 
Philosopher  at  London,  to  his  friend  Lien  Chi, 
at  Peking.'  This  was  briefly  noticed  in  the 
May  issue  of  the  '  Monthly  Review,'  where 
Goldsmith  was  then  acting  as  scribbler-general 


ii6        Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

to  Griffiths,  the  proprietor  of  the  magazine  (his 
reviews  of  Home's  '  Douglas'  and  of  Burke's 
'  Sublime  and  Beautiful '  appeared  in  the  same 
number),  and  it  was  described  as  in  Montes- 
quieu's manner.  A  year  later  Goldsmith  is 
writing  mysteriously  to  his  friend  Bob  Bryanton, 
of  Ballymulvey,  in  Ireland,  about  a  '  Chinese 
whom  he  shall  soon  make  talk  like  an  English- 
man ; '  and  when  at  last  his  '  Chinese  Letters,' 
as  they  were  called  at  first,  begin  to  appear  in 
Newbery's  '  Public  Ledger,'  he  takes  for  the 
name  of  his  Oriental,  Lien  Chi  Altangi,  one  of 
Walpole's  imaginary  correspondents  having  been 
Lien  Chi.  This  chain  of  association,  if  slight, 
is  strong  enough  to  justify  some  connection. 
The  fundamental  idea,  no  doubt,  was  far  older 
than  either  Walpole  or  Goldsmith  ;  but  it  is  not 
too  much  to  suppose  that  Walpole's  jeu  d' esprit 
supplied  just  that  opportune  suggestion  which 
produced  the  remarkable  and  now  too-much- 
neglected  series  of  letters  afterwards  reprinted 
under  the  general  title  of  '  The  Citizen  of  the 
World.' 

*  The  metaphors  and  allusions,'  says  Gold- 
smith in  one  of  those  admirable  prefaces  of 
which  he  possessed  the  secret,  *  are  all  drawn 
from  the  East ; '  and  in  another  place  he  tells  us 
that  a  certain  apostrophe  is  wholly  translated 


'  The  Citizen  of  the  World.'         1 1 7 

from  Ambulaaohamed,  a  real  (or  fictitious)  Ara- 
bian poet.  To  these  ingenuities  he  no  doubt 
attached  the  exaggerated  importance  habitually 
assigned  to  work  which  has  cost  its  writer  pains. 
But  it  is  not  the  adroitness  of  his  adaptations 
from  Le  Comte  and  Du  Halde  that  most  de- 
tains us  now.  The  purely  Oriental  part  of 
the  work  —  although  it  includes  the  amusing 
story  (an  *  Ephesian  Matron  '  d  la  Chinoise) 
of  the  widow  who,  in  her  haste  to  marry  again, 
fans  her  late  husband's  grave  to  dry  it  quicker, 
and  the  apologue  of  Prince  Bonbennin  and  the 
"White  Mouse  —  is  practically  dead  wood.  It  is 
Goldsmith  under  the  transparent  disguise  of 
Lien  Chi  —  Goldsmith  commenting,  after  the 
manner  of  Addison  and  Steele,  upon  Georgian 
England,  that  attracts  and  interests  the  modern 
reader.  His  Chinese  Philosopher  might  well 
have  wondered  at  the  lazy  puddle  moving  mud- 
dily  along  the  ill-kept  London  streets,  at  the 
large  feet  and  white  teeth  of  the  women,  at  the 
unwieldy  signs  with  their  nondescript  devices, 
at  the  unaccountable  fashion  of  lying-in-state  ; 
but  it  is  Goldsmith,  and  Goldsmith  only,  who 
could  have  imagined  the  admirable  humour  of 
the  dialogue  on  liberty  between  a  prisoner 
(through  his  grating),  a  porter  pausing  from 
his  burden  to  denounce  slavery  and  the  French, 


ii8        Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

and  a  soldier  who,  with  a  tremendous  oath, 
advocates,  above  all,  the  importance  of  religion. 
It  is  Goldsmith  again  —  the  Goldsmith  of  Green- 
Arbour-Court  and  Griffiths'  back-parlour — who 
draws,  from  a  harder  experience  than  could 
have  been  possible  to  Lien  Chi,  the  satiric  pic- 
ture of  the  so-called  republic  of  letters  which 
forms  his  twentieth  epistle.  '  Each  looks  upon 
his  fellow  as  a  rival,  not  an  assistant  in  the  same 
pursuit.  They  calumniate,  they  injure,  they 
despise,  they  ridicule  each  other :  if  one  man 
writes  a  book  that  pleases,  others  shall  write 
books  to  show  that  he  might  have  given  still 
greater  pleasure,  or  should  not  have  pleased. 
If  one  happens  to  hit  upon  something  new,  there 
are  numbers  ready  to  assure  the  public  that  all 
this  was  no  novelty  to  them  or  the  learned  ;  that 
Cardanus  or  Brunus,  or  some  other  author  too 
dull  to  be  generally  read,  had  anticipated  the 
discovery.  Thus,  instead  of  uniting  like  the 
members  of  a  commonwealth,  they  are  divided 
into  almost  as  many  factions  as  there  are  men  ; 
and  their  jarring  constitution,  instead  of  being 
styled  a  republic  of  letters,  should  be  entitled, 
an  anarchy  of  literature.'  One  rubs  one's  eyes 
as  one  reads  ;  one  asks  oneself  under  one's 
breath  if  it  is  of  our  day  that  the  satirist  is 
speaking.     No  ;  it  is  of  the  reign  of  the  second 


'  The  Citizen  of  the  World.'        119 

of  the  Georges,  before  Grub  Street  was  turned 
into  Milton  Street. 

Literature,  in  its  different  aspects,  plays  not 
a  small  part  in  the  lucubrations  of  Lien  Chi. 
Two  of  the  best  letters  are  devoted  to  a  whim- 
sical description  of  the  vagaries  of  some  of  its 
humbler  professors,  who  hold  a  Saturday  Club 
at  the  '  Broom '  at  Islington ;  others  treat  of 
the  decay  of  poetry  ;  of  novels,  and  '  Tristram 
Shandy '  in  particular ;  of  the  necessity  of  in- 
trigue or  riches  as  a  means  to  success.  Nor 
are  art  and  the  drama  neglected.  The  virtuoso, 
who  afforded  such  a  fund  of  amusement  to 
Fielding  and  Smollett,  receives  his  full  share  of 
attention ;  and  in  the  papers  upon  acting  and 
actors,  Goldsmith  once  more  displays  that  criti- 
cal common-sense  which  he  had  shown  so  con- 
spicuously in  '  The  Bee.'  Travellers  and  their 
trivialities  are  freely  ridiculed  ;  there  are  papers 
on  Newmarket,  on  the  Marriage  Act,  on  the 
coronation,  on  the  courts  of  justice  ;  on  quacks, 
gaming,  paint,  mourning,  and  mad  dogs.  There 
is  a  letter  on  the  irreverent  behaviour  of  the 
congregation  in  St.  Paul's  ;  there  is  another  on 
the  iniquity  of  making  shows  of  public  monu- 
ments. Now  and  then  a  more  serious  note  is 
touched,  as  when  the  author  is  stirred  to  un- 
wonted gravity  by  the  savage  penal  code  of  his 


I20        Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

day,  which,  'cementing  the  laws  with  blood,' 
closed  every  avenue  with  a  gibbet,  and  against 
which  Johnson  too  lifted  his  sonorous  voice. 

'  Scarce  can  our  fields,  such  crowds  at  Tyburn  die. 
With  hemp  the  gallows  and  the  fleet  supply,'  — 

he  sang  in  '  London,'  anticipating  his  later 
utterances  in  'The  Rambler.'  Goldsmith,  on 
the  other  hand,  crystallized  in  his  verse  the  raw 
material  of  which  he  made  his  Chinese  philo- 
sopher the  mouthpiece.  Several  of  the  best 
known  passages  of  his  two  longest  poems 
have  their  first  form  in  the  prose  of  Lien  Chi. 
Indeed,  one  actual  line  of  '  The  Traveller,'  *  A 
land  of  tyrants,  and  a  den  of  slaves,'  is  simply  a 
textual  quotation  from  '  The  Citizen  of  the 
World.' 

But  what  in  the  Chinese  letters  is  even  more 
remarkable  than  their  clever  raillery  of  social 
incongruities  and  abuses,  is  their  occasional 
indication  of  the  author's  innate  but  hitherto 
undisclosed  gift  for  the  delineation  of  humor- 
ous character.  Up  to  this  time  he  had  exhibited 
no  particular  tendency  in  this  direction.  The 
little  sketches  of  Jack  Spindle  and  *  my  cousin 
Hannah,'  in  '  The  Bee,'  go  no  farther  than  the 
corresponding  personifications  of  particular  qual- 
ities in  the  '  Spectator  '  and  '  Tatler  ; '  and  they 


'  The  Citizen  of  the  World.'  121 

are  not  of  the  kind  which,  to  employ  a  French 
figure,  '  enter  the  skin  '  of  the  personality  pre- 
sented. But  in  the  case  of  the  eccentric  phi- 
lanthropist of  '  The  Citizen  of  the  World/  whom 
he  christens  the  '  Man  in  Black,'  he  comes 
nearer  to  such  a  definite  embodiment  as  Addi- 
son's '  Will  Wimble.'  The  '  Man  in  Black  '  is 
evidently  a  combination  of  some  of  those  Gold- 
smith family  traits  which  were  afterwards  so 
successfully  recalled  in  Dr.  Primrose,  Mr. 
Hardcastle,  and  the  clergyman  of  '  The  De- 
serted Village.'  The  contrast  between  his 
credulous  charity  and  his  expressed  distrust  of 
human  nature,  between  his  simulated  harshness 
and  his  real  amiability,  constitutes  a  type  which 
has  since  been  often  used  successfully  in  Eng- 
lish literature  ;  it  is  clear,  too,  that  in  the 
account  of  his  life  he  borrows  both  from  his 
author  and  his  author's  father.  When  he 
speaks  of  his  unwillingness  to  take  orders,  of 
his  dislike  to  wear  a  long  wig  when  he  pre- 
ferred a  short  one,  or  a  black  coat  when  he 
dressed  in  brown,  he  is  only  giving  expression 
to  that  incompatibility  of  temper  which  led  to 
Goldsmith's  rejection  for  ordination  by  the 
Bishop  of  Elphin  ;  while  in  his  picture  of  his 
father's  house,  with  its  simple,  kindly  prodigal- 
ity,  its  little  group  of  grateful   parasites  who 


122        Eighteenth  Century  Fignettes. 

laugh,  like  Mr.  Hardcastle's  servants,  at  the 
host's  old  jokes,  and  the  careless  paternal  be- 
nevolence which  makes  the  children  '  mere 
machines  of  pity,'  '  instructed  in  the  art  of  giv- 
ing away  thousands  before  they  were  taught 
the  more  necessary  qualifications  of  getting  a 
farthing,'  one  recognises  the  environment  of 
that  emphatically  Irish  household  on  the  road 
from  Ballymahon  to  Athlone,  in  which  Gold- 
smith's own  boyhood  had  been  spent. 

Excellent  as  he  is,  however,  the  '  Man  in 
Black,'  with  his  grudging  generosity  and  his 
*  reluctant  goodness,'  is  surpassed  in  complete- 
ness of  characterization  by  the  more  finished 
portrait  of  Beau  Tibbs.  The  poor  little  pinched 
pretender  to  fashion,  with  his  tarnished  finery 
and  his  reed-voiced,  simpering  helpmate,  — with 
his  coffee-house  cackle  of  my  Lord  Mudlerand 
the  Duchess  of  Piccadilly,  and  his  magnificent 
promises  of  turbot  and  ortolan,  which  issue 
pitifully  in  postponed  ox-cheek  and  bitter  beer, 
—  approaches  the  dimensions  of  a  masterpiece. 
Charles  Lamb,  one  would  think,  must  have 
rejoiced  over  the  reckless  assurance  which  ex- 
patiates on  the  charming  view  of  the  Thames 
from  the  garret  of  a  back-street  in  the  suburbs, 
which  glorifies  the  '  paltry,  unframed  pictures ' 
on  its  walls  into  essays  in  the  manner  of  the 


'  The  Citizen  of  the  World.'         123 

celebrated  Grisoni,  and  transforms  a  surly  Scotch 
hag-of-all-work  into  an  old  and  privileged  family- 
servant, —  the  gift  '  of  a  friend  of  mine,  a  Par- 
liament man  from  the  Highlands.'  Nor  are 
there  many  pages  in  Dickens  more  perennially 
humorous  than  the  scene  in  which  the  '  Man  in 
Black,'  his  inamorata  the  pawnbroker's  widow, 
and  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Tibbs,  all  make  a  party  to 
the  picturesque  old  Vauxhall  Gardens  of  Jona- 
than Tyers.  The  inimitable  sparring  which 
ensues  between  the  second-hand  gentility  of 
the  beau's  lady  and  the  moneyed  vulgarity  of 
the  tradesman's  relict,  their  different  and  wholly 
irreconcilable  views  of  the  entertainment,  and 
the  tragic  termination  of  the  whole,  by  which 
the  widow  is  balked  of  '  the  waterworks '  be- 
cause good  manners  constrain  her  to  sit  out  the 
wire-drawn  roulades  and  quavers  of  Mrs.  Tibbs 
—  these  are  things  which  age  cannot  wither 
nor  custom  stale.  If  Goldsmith  had  written 
nothing  but  this  miniature  trilogy  of  Beau 
Tibbs, — if  Dr.  Primrose  were  uninvented  and 
Tony  Lumpkin  non-existent,  —  he  would  still 
have  earned  a  perpetual  place  among  English 
humorists. 

Something  of  this,  undoubtedly,  he  owed  to 
the  fortunate  instinct  which  dictated  his  choice 
of  his  material.     The  forerunner  of  Dickens,  — 


124        Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

the  disciple,  although  he  knew  it  not,  of  Field- 
ing,—  he  makes  his  capital  by  his  disregard  of 
the  reigning  models  of  his  time.  Declining  to 
select  his  characters  from  the  fashionable  ab- 
stractions of  Sentimental  Comedy  and  the  me- 
chanical puppets  of  conventional  High  Life,  he 
turns  aside  to  the  moving,  various,  many-coloured 
middle-classes,  from  whose  ranks  originality  has 
not  yet  been  banished,  or  nature  cast  out.  Of 
these  he  had  knowledge  and  experience ;  of 
those  he  had  seen  but  little.  Upon  the  other 
walk,  his  labours  might  have  been  as  forgotten 
as  the  '  Henry'  of  Richard  Cumberland  or  the 
'  Henrietta'  of  Mrs.  Charlotte  Lenox.  But  he 
took  his  own  line  ;  and  in  consequence.  Beau 
Tibbs  and  the  pawnbroker's  widow  (with  her 
rings  and  her  green  damask)  are  as  much  alive 
to-day  as  Partridge  or  Mrs.  Nickleby. 


AN   OLD  LONDON  BOOKSELLER. 

'  FjEC.  22.  Mr.  John  Newbery,  of  St.  Paul's 
^^  churchyard,  sincerely  lamented  by  all  who 
knew  him.'  These  words,  copied  from  the 
'Gentleman's  Magazine'  for  1767,  record  the' 
death  of  one  who,  in  his  way,  was  an  eighteenth 
century  notability.  He  belonged  to  the  good  old 
'  Keep-your-Shop-and-your-Shop-will-keep-you ' 
class  of  tradesmen,  who  lived  without  pretence 
over  their  places  of  business  in  the  City, 
worked  industriously  during  the  week,  marched 
off  to  St.  Bride's  or  St.  Dunstan's  on  Sunday 
morning  with  a  crop-eared  'prentice  in  the 
rear  to  carry  the  great  gilt  Bible,  and  jogged 
away  in  crowded  chaises  of  summer  afternoons 
to  eat  tarts  at  Highgate  or  drink  tea  out  of 
china  in  the  Long  Room  at  Bagnigge  Wells. 
In  due  time  they  made  their  '  plumbs ; '  sent  their 
sons  to  St.  Paul's  or  Merchant  Taylors',  some- 
times even  to  Oxford  or  Cambridge  ;  and  finally 
left  their  portraits  to  posterity  in  the  becoming 
and  worshipful  garb  of  Sheriffs  or  Common-coun- 
cilmen.     Unfortunately  for  this  paper,  there  is 


126        Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

no  such  limner's  likeness  of  '  honest  John  New- 
bery.'  Yet  we  are  not  wholly  without  details 
as  to  his  character  and  personal  appearance. 
That  *  glorious  pillar  of  unshaken  orthodoxy/ 
Dr.  Primrose,  formerly  of  Wakefield,  for  whom, 
as  all  the  world  knows,  he  had  published  a 
pamphlet  '  against  the  Deuterogamlsts  of  the 
age,'  describes  him  as  a  red-faced  good-natured 
little  man,  who  was  always  in  a  hurry.  '  He 
was  no  sooner  alighted,'  says  the  worthy  Vicar, 
*  but  he  was  in  haste  to  be  gone  ;  for  he  was  ever 
on  business  of  the  utmost  importance.'  '  Mr. 
Idler'  confirms  this  indication.  'When  he 
enters  a  house,  his  first  declaration  is,  that  he 
cannot  sit  down ;  and  so  short  are  his  visits, 
that  he  seldom  appears  to  have  come  for  any 
other  reason  but  to  say.  He  must  go.'  It  is 
not  difficult  to  fill  in  the  outline  of  Johnson  and 
Goldsmith.  'The  philanthropic  bookseller  in  St. 
Paul's  church-yard  '  was  plainly  a  bustling,  multi- 
farious, and  not  unkindly  personage,  essentially 
commercial,  essentially  enterprising,  rigorously 
exacting  his  money's  worth  of  work,  keeping 
prudent  record  of  all  casual  cash  advances,  but, 
on  the  whole,  not  unbeneficent  in  his  business 
fashion  to  the  needy  brethren  of  the  pen  by  whom 
he  was  surrounded.  Many  of  John  Newbery's 
guineas  passed  to   Johnson,   to  Goldsmith,  to 


An  Old  London  Bookseller.  127 

poor  mad  Christopher  Smart,  who  married  his 
step-daughter.  As  Johnson  implies,  it  is  not 
impossible  that  he  finally  fell  a  victim  to  that 
unreasoning  mental  activity  which  left  him  al- 
ways struggling  hopelessly  with  more  schemes 
and  proposals  than  one  man  could  possibly 
manage.  His  wig  must  often  have  been  awry, 
and  his  spectacles  mislaid,  in  that  perpetual 
journey  from  pillar  to  post  which  ultimately 
landed  him,  at  the  comparatively  early  age  of 
fifty-four,  in  his  grave  at  Waltham  St.  Lawrence. 
It  was  at  Waltham  St.  Lawrence,  a  quiet 
little  Berkshire  village,  whose  churchyard  Is 
dotted  with  the  tombs  of  earlier  Newberys, 
that  he  had  been  born.  His  father,  a  small 
farmer,  destined  him  for  his  own  calling.  But, 
like  Gay,  it  was  not  John  Newbery's  fate  '  to 
brighten  ploughshares  in  paternal  land.'  He 
passed  early  into  the  service  of  a  '  merchant,' 
otherwise  a  printer  and  newspaper  proprietor, 
at  Reading,  managing  so  well  that,  when  his 
employer  died,  he  was  left  a  co-legatee  in  the 
business.  Thereupon,  being  a  resolute  man, 
he  did  better  still,  and  married  his  master's 
widow,  who  had  three  children.  Even  this 
succeeded  ;  upon  which,  progressing  always  in 
prosperity,  he  began  to  think  of  starting  in 
London.     Before  doing  so,  he  made  a  tour  in 


128        Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

the  provinces.  Of  this  expedition  there  exists 
a  curious  record  in  the  shape  of  an  unprinted 
journal,  throwing  much  light  upon  modes  of 
travelling  in  those  early  coaching  days,  when 
the  unfortunate  outside  passenger  (like  Pastor 
Moritz  in  a  later  paper  ^)  had  to  choose  between 
being  jolted  to  death  in  the  basket,  or  clinging 
like  a  fly  to  the  slippery  top  of  the  vehicle. 
The  majority  of  the  entries  are  merely  matter 
of  business,  —  titles  for  new  books,  recipes  for 
diet-drinks,  shrewd  trade  maxims,  and  the  like. 
But  here  and  there  the  writer  intersperses  notes 
of  general  interest,  — on  Dick  Turpin  the  high- 
wayman, on  Lady  Godiva  and  peeping  Tom, 
and  (more  than  once)  upon  that  '  curious  and 
very  useful  machine,'  the  Ducking-Stool  for 
scolds,  a  '  plan  of  which  instrument  (he  says) 
he  shall  procure  and  transplant  to  Berkshire 
for  the  good  of  his  native  county.'  His  busi- 
ness at  Reading  was  as  miscellaneous  as  his 
memorandum  book,  and  he  seems  to  have  dealt 
in  all  kinds  of  goods.  About  1744  he  removed 
to  London,  opening  a  shop  at  the  sign  of  the 
'  Bible  and  Crown,'  near  Devereux  Court, 
without  Temple  Bar,  together  with  a  branch 
establishment  at  the  Royal  Exchange.  To  this 
Johnson  probably  refers  when  he  says  :  '  He  has 
1  See  post, '  A  German  in  England.' 


An  Old  London  Bookseller.  129 

one  habitation  near  Bow  Church,  and  another 
about  a  mile  distant.  By  this  ingenious  distribu- 
tion of  himself  between  two  houses,  he  has  con- 
trived to  be  found  at  neither.'  From  the  '  Bible 
and  Crown/  which  had  been  his  old  Reading 
sign,  he  moved  a  year  later  to  the  '  Bible  and 
Sun '  in  St.  Paul's  Churchyard.  This  continued 
to  be  his  headquarters  until  his  death.  Gradu- 
ally his  indiscriminate  activities  narrowed  them- 
selves to  two  distinct  branches  of  business,  in 
these  days  incongruous  enough,  —  the  sale  of 
books  and  the  sale  of  patent  medicines.  While 
he  was  still  resident  at  Reading,  he  had  become 
part  owner  of  Dr.  Hooper's  Female  Pills ;  and 
soon  after  his  settlement  in  London,  he  ac- 
quired the  sole  management  of  a  more  famous 
panacea,  Dr.  James's  Fever  Powders,  which 
had  in  their  time  an  extraordinary  vogue.  Ac- 
cording to  Mrs.  Delany,  the  King  dosed  the 
Princess  Elizabeth  with  them ;  Gray  and 
Cowper  both  believed  in  their  efficacy ;  and 
Horace  Walpole  declared  he  should  take  them 
if  the  house  were  on  fire.  Fielding  specially 
praises  them  in  '  Amelia,'  affirming  that  in  almost 
any  country  but  England,  they  would  have 
brought  '  public  Honours  and  Rewards  '  to  his 
'  worthy  and  ingenious  Friend  Dr.  James ; ' 
while  Goldsmith  may  be  said  to  have  laid  down 
9 


130        Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

his  life  for  them.  With  the  sale  of  these  and 
kindred  specifics,  John  Newbery  alternated  his 
unwearied  speculations  as  a  bookseller.  He 
was  at  the  back  of  Smollett's  venture  of  the 
*  British  Magazine ; '  it  was  for  his  *  Universal 
Chronicle  '  that  Johnson  wrote  his  *  Idler  '  and 
quizzed  his  proprietor  as  '  Jack  Whirler ; '  he 
was  the  publisher  of  Goldsmith's  *  Traveller ' 
and  '  Citizen  of  the  World ; '  and  he  probably 
found  part  of  the  historical  sixty  guineas  which 
somebody  paid  for  the  '  Vicar  of  Wakefield.' 
He  died  at  Canbury  or  Canonbury  House, 
Islington,  in  the  still-existent  Tower  of  which 
he  was  an  occasional  resident.  Indeed,  it  is 
more  than  probable  that  he  was  at  one  time 
the  responsible  landlord  of  that  favourite  retir- 
ing place  for  literary  men,  — a  retiring  place  not 
without  its  exceptional  advantages,  if  we  are  to 
believe  last-century  advertisements,  which,  in 
addition  to  a  natural  cold  bath,  speak  of  *  a 
superlative  Room,  furnish'd  for  a  single  Person, 
or  two  Gentlemen,  having  a  Prospect  into  five 
Counties  ['longos  prospicit  agros!'],  and  the 
use  of  a  good  Garden  and  Summer-House.' 
Besides  this  there  were  traditions  of  Prior 
Bolton  and  Anne  of  Cleves,  of  Bacon  and 
Elizabeth,  of  Sir  John  Spencer  and  William 
Fielding,  Earl  of  Denbigh  (the  novelist's  grand- 


An  Old  London  Bookseller.  131 

uncle),  which  should  certainly  have  figured  in 
any  schedule  of  attractions,  and  must  naturally 
have  been  interesting  to  the  Smarts  and  Hills 
and  Woodfalls  and  Goldsmiths  who  afterwards 
inhabited  the  old  ivy-clad  Tower. 

Newbery's  epitaph  in  the  churchyard  of  his 
native  village  lays  its  main  stress  upon  his  con- 
nection with  Dr.  James's  nostrum  ;  and  it  was 
doubtless  to  this  and  the  other  patent  medi- 
cines with  which  he  was  connected  that  he 
owed  the  material  part  of  his  prosperity.  Yet 
it  is  not  now  upon  the  celebrated  '  Arquebusade 
Water,'  or  the  far-famed  '  Cephalic  Snuff,'  or 
the  incomparable  '  Beaume  de  Vie,'  once  so 
familiar  in  eighteenth-century  advertisements, 
that  he  bases  his  individual  claim  to  the  grati- 
tude of  posterity.  It  is,  to  quote  his  biographer, 
Mr.  Welsh,  as  '  the  first  bookseller  who  made 
the  issue  of  books,  specially  intended  for  chil- 
dren, a  business  of  any  importance  ;  '  as  the 
publisher  of  '  The  Renowned  History  of  Giles 
Gingerbread :  a  little  Boy  who  lived  upon 
Learning,'  of  '  Mrs.  Margery  Two-Shoes  '  (after- 
ward Lady  Jones),  of  the  redoubtable  '  Tommy 
Trip  and  his  dog  Jouler,'  of  the  '  Lilliputian 
Magazine,'  and  of  numbers  of  other  tiny  master- 
pieces in  that  flowered  and  gilt  Dutch  paper  of 
which  the  art  has   been  lost,   that  he  is  best 


132        Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

remembered.  Concerning  these  commendable 
little  treatises,  with  their  matter-of-fact  title- 
pages  and  their  artless  appeal  to  all  little  Mas- 
ters and  Misses  '  who  are  good,  or  intend  to 
be  good,'  there  are  varying  opinions.  Dr.  John- 
son, according  to  Mrs.  Thrale,  thought  them  too 
childish  for  their  purpose.     He   preferred  the 

*  Seven  Champions,'  or  *  Parisenus  and  Paris- 
menus.'    '  Babies,'  he  said  in  his  legislative  way, 

*  do  not  want  to  hear  about  babies.  They  like  to 
be  told  of  giants  and  castles,  and  of  somewhat 
which  can  stretch  and  stimulate  their  little  minds.' 
'  Remember  always,'  he  added,  '  that  the  par- 
ents buy  the  books,  and  that  the  children 
never  read  them.'  Yet  it  is  claimed  for  Robert 
Southey  that  in  Newbery's  '  delectable  histories ' 
he  found  just  that  very  stimulus  which  made  him 
a  lifelong  book-lover ;  and  it  is  characteristic 
of  Charles  Lamb  (a  better  judge  of  children's 
literature  than  Johnson)  that  he  puts  forward 
these  particular  publications  against  the  Bar- 
baulds  and  Trimmers  ('  those  blights  and  blasts 
of  all  that  is  human  in  man  and  child '),  as  pre- 
senting the  very  quality  which  Johnson  desired, 
the  '  beautiful  interest  in  wild  tales,  which  made 
the  child  a  man,  while  all  the  time  he  suspected 
himself  to  be  no  bigger  than  a  child.'  'Think 
what  you  would  have  been  now,'  he  writes  to 


An  Old  London  Bookseller.         133 

Coleridge  of  '  Goody  Two-Shoes/  *  if  instead 
of  being  fed  with  tales  and  old  wives'  fables 
in  childhood,  you  had  been  crammed  with 
geography  and  natural  history  1 ' 

The  authorship  of  these  '  classics  of  the  nur- 
sery'  is  an  old  battle  ground.  Newbery,  it  is 
alleged,  wrote  some  of  them  himself.  He  was 
(says  Dr.  Primrose  when  he  met  him)  '  at  that 
time  actually  compiling  materials  for  the  history 
of  one  Mr.  Thomas  Trip,'  and  if  this  can  hardly 
be  accepted  as  proof  positive,  it  may  be  safely 
asserted  that  to  Newbery's  business  instinct 
are  due  those  ingenious  references  to  his  dif- 
ferent wares  and  publications  which  crop  up  so 
unexpectedly  in  the  course  of  the  narrative. 
For  example,  in  '  Goody  Two-Shoes '  we  are 
told  that  the  heroine's  father  '  died  miserably ' 
because  he  was  '  seized  with  a  violent  Fever  in 
a  Place  where  Dr.  James's  Powder  was  not  to 
be  had  '  1  But  who  were  Newbery's  assistant 
authors  ?  Giles  and  Griffith  Jones,  say  some  ; 
Oliver  Goldsmith,  say  others.  With  respect  to 
the  last-named  no  particular  testimony  seems  to 
be  forthcoming  beyond  his  known  relations  to  the 
publisher,  and  the  so-called  '  evidence  of  style.' 
In  the  absence  of  confirmatory  details  the  former 
is  worthless  ;  and  the  latter  is  often  entirely 
misleading.     Without  going  back  to  the  time- 


134        Eighteenth  Century  yimettes. 

honoured  case  of  Erasmus  and  Scaliger's  ora- 
tion, two  modern  instances  of  this  may  be 
cited.  Mr.  Thaciceray,  says  Mr.  Forster, 
claimed  the  '  Pleasant  and  Delightful  History 
of  Thomas  Hickathrift'  for  Henry  Fielding. 
But  both  Mr.  Forster  and  Mr.  Thackeray 
should  have  remembered  that  their  common 
acquaintance,  Mr.  Isaac  Bickerstaff,  of  the 
'Tatler,'  had  written  of  Hickathrift  as  a  chap- 
book  when  Fielding  was  a  baby.  In  the  same 
way  '  Tommy  Trip '  has,  by  no  mean  judges, 
been  attributed  to  Goldsmith  upon  the  strength 
of  the  following  quatrain :  — 

*  Three  children  sliding  on  the  ice 

Upon  a  summer's  day, 
As  it  fell  out  they  all  fell  in, 
The  rest  they  ran  away.* 

Alasl  and  alas!  for  the  *  evidence  of  style.' 
Not  only  had  these  identical  lines  been  turned 
into  Latin  in  the  '  Gentleman's  Magazine '  for 
July,  1754,  when  Goldsmith  was  still  studying 
medicine  at  Leyden ;  but  they  are  quoted  at  p. 
30  of  *  The  Character  of  Richard  St[ee]le,  Esq  ; ' 
by  '  Toby,  Abel's  Kinsman,'  which  was  issued  by 
'J.  Morphew,  near  Stationer's  Hall'  as  far  back 
as  the  month  of  November,  171 3.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  they  are  much  older  still,  being  affirmed 


An  Old  London  Bookseller.         135 

by  Chambers  in  his  excellent  *  Book  of  Days' 
to  be,  in  their  first  form,  part  of  a  long  and 
rambling  story  in  doggerel  rhyme  dating  from 
the  early  part  of  the  Civil  Wars,  which  is  to  be 
found  at  the  end  of  a  little  old  book  entitled 
*The  Loves  of  Hero  and  Leander,'  i2mo, 
London,  1653,  and  1677. 


GRAY'S    LIBRARY. 

A  MONG  Gray's  papers  was  one  inscribed 
•^"^  '  Dialogue  of  Books.'  The  handwriting 
was  that  of  his  biographer  Mason,  but  it  was 
believed  to  be  either  by  Gray  or  by  West. 
There  is  a  strong  presumption  that  the  author 
was  Gray ;  and  it  is  accordingly  attributed  to 
him  in  Mr.  D.  C.  Tovey's  '  Gray  and  his 
Friends,'  where  for  the  first  time  it  was  printed. 
It  shows  us  the  little  great  man  (if  it  is  accu- 
rately dated  1742,  it  must  have  been  in  the  year 
of  his  fullest  poetical  activity)  sitting  tranquilly 
in  his  study  chair,  when  he  is  '  suddenly  alarmd 
with  a  great  hubbub  of  Tongues.'  He  listens  ; 
and  finds  that  his  books  are  talking  to  one  an- 
other. Madame  de  S6vign6  is  being  what  Mrs. 
Gamp  would  call  '  scroudged  '  by  Aristotle,  who 
replies  to  her  compressed  expostulations  with 
all  the  brutality  of  a  philosopher  and  a  realist. 
Thereupon  she  appeals  to  her  relative,  the 
author  of  the  '  Histoire  amoureuse  des  Gaules.' 
But  the    gallant    M.    Bussy-Rabutin,    himself 


Grays  Library.  137 

pining  for  an  interchange  of  compliments  with 
a  neighbouring  Catullus,  is  hopelessly  penned 
in  by  a  hulking  edition  of  Strabo,  and  cannot 
possibly  arrive  to  the  assistance  of  his  belle 
Cousine.  Elsewhere  La  Bruyere  comments 
upon  the  strange  companions  with  whom  Fate 
has  acquainted  him  ;  and  Locke  observes,  with 
a  touch  of  temper,  that  he  is  associated  with 
Ovid, — and  Ray  the  Naturalist  I  ^  Virgil  pla- 
cidly quotes  a  line  of  his  own  poems  ;  More, 
the  Platonist,  delivers  himself  of  a  neat  little 
copy-book  sentiment  in  praise  of  theological 
speculation  ;  and  great  fat  Dr.  Cheyne  huskily 
mutters  his  own  adage,  '  Every  man  after  forty 
is  either  a  fool  or  a  Physician.'  In  another 
corner  an  ill-judged  and  irrelevant  remark  by 
Euclid,  touching  the  dimensions  of  a  point, 
brings  down  upon  him  the  scorn  both  of  Swift 
and  Boileau,  who  clamour  for  the  unconditional 
suppression  of  mathematics,  (If  there  be  noth- 
ing else,  this  in  itself  is  almost  sufficient  to  fix 
the  authorship  of  the  paper  with  Gray,  whose 
hatred  of  mathematics  was  only  equalled  by  that 
of  Goldsmith.)  Then  a  pert  exclamation  from 
a    self-sufficient     Vade   Mecum    provokes    the 

^  Ray's  '  Select  Remains '  with  life  by  Derham,  1740, 
and  many  marginal  notes  by  Gray,  was  recently  in  a 
London  bookseller's  catalogue. 


138       Eighteenth  Century  Fignettes. 

owner  of  the  library  to  so  hearty  an  outburst 
of  merriment  that  the  startled  tomes  at  once 
shrink  back  into  '  uncommunicating  muteness.' 
Laughter,  it  would  seem,  is  as  fatal  to  books  as 
it  was  of  old  to  the  Coquecigrues. 

"Whether  Gray's  library  ever  again  broke 
silence,  his  biographers  have  not  related.  But 
if  his  books  were  pressed  for  space  while  in  his 
possession,  they  have  since  enjoyed  ample  op- 
portunities for  change  of  air  and  scene.  When 
he  died  he  left  them,  with  his  manuscripts,  to 
Mason,  who  in  turn  bequeathed  them  to  the 
poet's  friend  Stonehewer,  from  whom  they 
passed,  in  part,  to  a  relative,  Mr.  Bright  of  Skef- 
fington  Hall.  At  Mr.  Bright's  death,  being 
family  property,  they  were  sold  by  auction.  In 
August,  185 1,  they  were  again  offered  for  sale; 
and  three  years  later  a  number  of  them,  which 
had  apparently  been  reserved  or  bought  in, 
once  more  came  under  the  hammer  at  Sotheby 
and  Wilkinson's.  We  have  before  us  the  cata- 
logue of  the  second  sale,  which  is  naturally 
much  fuller  than  that  of  1854.  What  strikes  one 
first  is  the  care  with  which  the  majority  of  the 
volumes  had  been  preserved  by  their  later  pos- 
sessors. Many  of  the  Note-Books  were  cush- 
ioned on  velvet  in  special  cases,  while  the  more 
precious  manuscripts  had  been  skilfully  inlaid, 


Gray's  Library.  139 

and  bound  in  olive  morocco  witli  leather  joints 
and  linings  of  crimson  silk.  Like  Prior,  Gray 
must  have  preserved  almost  everything,  '  e'en 
from  his  boyish  days.'  Among  the  books  is 
*  Plutarch's  Lives,'  with  Dacier's  notes,  and 
the  inscription,  *  E  libris  Thomae  Gray,  Scholae 
Eton:  Alumn.  Januar.  22,  1733 '  —  a  year  before 
he  left  for  Cambridge  ;  there  is  also  his  copy  of 
Pope's  *  Iliad,'  with  autograph  date  a  year  ear- 
lier; there  is  a  still  more  youthful  (though 
perhaps  more  suspicious)  possession  —  namely, 
three  volumes  of  Dryden's  '  Virgil,'  which  were 
said  to  have  actually  belonged  to  Pope.  '  Ex 
Libris  A.  Pope,  1710,'  was  written  at  the  back 
of  the  portrait,  and  the  same  inscription  recurred 
in  each  volume,  though  in  the  others  some 
Vandal,  probably  a  classmate,  by  adding  a  tail 
to  the  '  P '  and  an  'r'  at  the  end,  had  turned 
the  '  Pope '  into  '  Roper.'  Another  of  Gray's 
Eton  books  was  a  Waller,  acquired  in  1729,  in 
which  favourite  poems  and  passages  were  under- 
lined. 

Of  the  classics  he  must  have  been  a  most  un- 
wearied and  sedulous  student.  Euripides  he 
read  in  the  great  folio  of  Joshua  Barnes  (Cantab. 
1694),  which  is  marked  throughout  by  a  special 
system  of  stars,  inverted  commas,  and  lines  in 
red  crayon  ;  and  his  note-books  bristle  with  ex- 


140        Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

tracts,  neatly  *  arranged  and  digested,'  from  all 
the  best  Greek  authors  —  Sophocles,  Thucy- 
dides,  Xenophon,  and  even  that  Isocrates  whom 
Goldsmith,  from  the  critical  altitudes  of  the 
'  Monthly  Review,'  recommended  him  to  study. 
At  other  '  classics '  he  worked  with  equal  dili- 
gence. His  *  Decameron  '  —  the  London  quarto 
of  1725 — was  filled  with  mar^ma/ia  identifying 
Boccaccio's  sources  of  inspiration  and  principal 
imitators,  while  his  Milton  —  the  two-volume 
duodecimo  of  1730-8  — was  interleaved,  and  an- 
notated profusely  with  parallel  passages  drawn 
from  the  Bible,  Dante,  Shakespeare,  and  'the 
ancients.'  He  had  crowded  Dugdale's  '  Baron- 
age '  with  corrections  and  additions ;  he  had 
largely  *  commented '  the  four  folio  volumes  of 
Clarendon's  *  Rebellion  ; '  and  he  had  followed 
everywhere,  with  remorseless  rectifications,  the 
vagrant  utterances  of  gossiping  Gilbert  Burnet. 
His  patience,  accuracy,  research,  were  not  less 
extraordinary  than  his  odd,  out-of-the-way 
knowledge.  In  the  'Voyages  de  Bergeron' 
(^quarto)  that  author  says :  '  Mango  Cham  fut 
noi6.'  No,  comments  Gray,  decisively,  '  Mun- 
cac^  or  Mangu-Khanw  was  not  drowned,  but  in 
reality  slain  in  China  at  the  siege  of  Ho-chew  in 
1258.'  Which  of  us  could  oblige  an  inquisitive 
examiner  with  the  biography  of  this  Eastern  po- 


Gray's  Library.  141 

tentate  1  Which  of  us  would  not  be  reduced  to 
'  combining  our  information '  (like  the  ingenious 
writer  on  Chinese  Metaphysics)  as  to  'mangoes ' 
and  '  great  Chams  ' ! 

But  the  two  most  interesting  items  of  the  Cat- 
alogue are  yet  unmentioned.  One  is  the  labo- 
rious collection  of  Manuscript  Music  that  Gray 
compiled  in  Italy  while  frivolous  Horace  Walpole 
was  eating  iced  fruits  in  a  domino  to  the  sound 
of  a  guitar.  Zamperelli,  Pergolesi,  Arrigoni, 
Galuppi  —  he  has  ransacked  them  all,  noting  the 
school  of  the  composer  and  the  source  of  the 
piece  selected  —  copying  out  religiously  even  the 
'  Regole  per  I'Accompagnamento.'  The  other, 
which  we  who  write  have  seen,  is  the  famous 
Linnaeus  exhibited  at  Cambridge  in  188 15  by  Mr. 
Ruskin.  It  is  an  interleaved  copy  of  the  '  Sys- 
tema  Naturae,'  two  volumes  in  three,  covered 
as  to  their  margins  and  added  pages  with  won- 
derful minute  notes  in  Latin,  and  illustrated  by 
Gray  himself  with  delicately  finished  pen-and-ink 
drawings  of  birds  and  insects.  During  the  later 
part  of  his  life  these  volumes,  we  are  told,  were 
continually  on  his  table,  and  his  absorbing  love 
for  natural  history  is  everywhere  manifested  in 
his  journals  and  pocket-books.  When  he  is  in 
the  country,  he  classes  the  plants ;  when  in  town, 
he  notes  the  skins  of  birds  in  shops  ;  and  when 


142        Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

he  eats  whitebait  at  Greenwich,  he  straightway 
describes  that  dainty  in  the  language  of  Tacitus. 
Nullus  odor  nisiPiscis;  farind  respersus,  frixusque 
editur. 

Among  the  manuscripts  proper  of  this  collec- 
tion, the  place  of  honour  belongs  to  one  which 
Mason  had  labelled  '  Original  Copy  of  the  Elegy 
in  a  Country  Church  Yard.'  In  addition  to  other 
variations  from  the  printed  text,  erased  words  in 
this  MS.  showed  that  Cato  stood  originally  for 
Hampden,  and  Tully  and  Caesar  for  Milton  and 
Cromwell : 

'  Some  mute  inglorious  Tully  here  may  rest, 
Some  Caesar  guiltless  of  his  country's  blood.' 

Here,  too,  were  found  those  well-known  but  re- 
jected '  additional '  stanzas  : 

*  The  thoughtless  World  to  Majesty  may  bow, 
Exalt  the  brave,  and  idolize  Success  ; 
But  more  to  Innocence  their  Safety  owe 

Than  Pow'r  and  Genius  e'er  conspir'd  to  bless. 

'  And  thou,  who  mindful  of  th'  unhonour'd  Dead, 
Dost  in  these  Notes  their  artless  Tale  relate, 
By  Night  and  lonely  Contemplation  led 
To  linger  in  the  gloomy  Walks  of  Fate  : 

'  Hark  I  how  the  sacred  Calm  that  broods  around, 
Bids  ev'ry  fierce  tumultuous  Passion  cease ; 
In  still  small  Accents  whisp'ring  from  the  Ground, 
A  grateful  Earnest  of  eternal  Peace. 


Gray's  Library.  143 

'  No  more,  with  Reason  and  thyself  at  Strife, 

Give  anxious  Cares  and  endless  Wishes  room  ; 
But  thro'  the  cool  sequester'd  Vale  of  Life 
Pursue  the  silent  Tenour  of  thy  Doom.'  i 

Another  group  of  autographs  in  this  volume 
had  a  special  interest.  The  first  was  the  note- 
let,  or  '  spell,'  which  Lady  Schaub  and  Miss 
Speed  left  for  Gray  upon  that  first  call  when  the 
nervous  poet  was  'not  at  home 'to  his  unex- 
pected visitors.  Next  to  this  came  the  poem 
which  the  note  elicited  —  that  charming  '  Long 
Story,'  with  its  echo  of  Matthew  Prior,  which  has 
set  their  tune  to  so  many  later  verse-spinners  : 

*  His  bushy  beard,  and  shoe-strings  green, 
His  high-crown'd  hat,  and  sattin-doublet, 
Mov'd  the  stout  heart  of  England's  Queen, 
Tho'  Pope  and  Spaniard  could  not  trouble  it* 

Or  again : 

'  Who  prowl'd  the  country  far  and  near, 
Bewitch'd  the  children  of  the  peasants, 
Dried  up  the  cows,  and  lam'd  the  deer, 
And  suck'd  the  eggs,  and  kill'd  the  pheasants/ 

^  Another  additional  stanza,  perhaps  better  known  than 
the  above,  does  not  occur  in  the  '  Original  Copy '  of  the 
Elegy,  but  in  a  later  MS.  at  Pembroke  College :  — 
'  There  scatter' d  oft,  the  earliest  of  the  Year, 
By  Hands  unseen,  are  Show'rs  of  Violets  found : 
The  Red-breast  loves  to  build,  &  warble  there, 
And  little  Footsteps  lightly  print  the  Ground.' 


144        Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

Does  not  one  seem  to  catch  in  this  the  coming 
cadences  of  another  haunter  of  the  *  Poets'  Walk  ' 
at  Eton  —  of  Winthrop  Mackworth  Praed  ;  nay, 
an  it  be  not  lese  majeste,  even  of  the  lighter 
strains  of  the  Laureate  himself  1  To  the  '  Long 
Story '  followed  Miss  Speed's  polite  little  ac- 
knowledgment with  its  invitation  to  dinner,  and 
a  few  pages  further  on  the  verses  beginning — 

'  Midst  Beauty  and  Pleasure's  gay  Triumphs  to  languish/ 

which  Gray  probably  wrote  for  her  —  verses  in 
which  there  is  more  of  poetic  ardour  than  genu- 
ine passion.  Gray  was  not  a  marrying  man. 
Yet  one  feels  half  sorry  that  he  was  never  united 
to  *  Your  oblig'd  &  obedient  Henrietta  Jane 
Speed,'  with  her  £30,000,  her  house  in  town, 
and  her  *  china  and  old  japan  infinite.'  Still 
more  to  be  resented  is  the  freak  of  Fate  which 
transformed  the  delightful  Melissa  of  the  '  Long 
Story '  into  the  berouged  French  Baronne  who, 
sixteen  years  later,  in  company  with  her  lap- 
dogs,  piping  bullfinch,  and  cockatoo,  arrived 
from  the  Hague  as  Madame  de  la  Perribre,  and 
'  Ministress  at  London.' 

The  large  quarto  volume  containing  the  above 
poems  also  included  the  first  sketch  in  red  crayon 
of  Gray's  unfinished  Latin  Poem,  '  De  Princi- 
piis  Cogitandi,'  and  a  copy  of  the  translation  of 


Gray's  Library.  145 

the  Ugolino  episode  from  the  *  Inferno,'  first 
printed  by  Mr.  Gosse  in  1884.  Of  the  volumes 
of  miscellaneous  MSS.  (where  was  to  be  found 
the  '  Dialogue  of  Books ')  it  is  Impossible  to 
speak  here.  But  among  the  rest  comes  a  copy 
of  the  *  Strawberry  Hill '  edition  of  the  '  Odes 
by  Mr.  Gray*  —  those  Odes  which  at  first  he 
had  so  obstinately  refused  to  annotate.  '  If  a 
thing  cannot  be  understood  without  notes,'  he 
told  Walpole,  '  it  had  better  not  be  understood 
at  all.'  He  must,  however,  have  subsequently 
recanted,  since  this  copy  is  filled  with  carefully 
written  explanations  of  the  allusions,  and  with 
indications  of  the  sources  of  information.  This 
book  and  the  Note-Books  of  Travel  and  Read- 
ing, with  their  methodical  arrangement,  their 
scrupulous  accuracy,  their  unwearied  pains,  all 
help  us  to  understand  that  leisurely  fastidious- 
ness, that  hesitating  dilettanteism,  that  endless 
preluding  to  unachieved  performance,  which 
make  of  the  most  literary,  exact,  and  polished  of 
poets,  at  the  same  time  the  least  copious  of 
writers.  In  his  bust  in  the  hall  of  Pembroke 
College,  Mr.  Hamo  Thornycroft  has  happily 
succeeded  in  accentuating  these  qualities  of  re- 
finement and  intellectual  precision.  For  the 
rest,  is  not  Gray  wholly  contained  in  the  vignette 
of  Rogers  to  Mitford  ?    Gray,  he  says,  saw  little 


146        Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

society  in  London.  He  had  'a  nice  dinner 
from  the  Tavern  brought  to  his  lodgings,  a  glass 
or  two  of  sweet  wine,  and  [here  is  a  delightful 
touch  1]  as  he  sippd  it  talked  about  great  Peo- 
ple-' It  needs  but  to  fill  the  room  with  those 
scarlet  martagon-lilies  and  double  stocks  for 
which  he  trudged  daily  to  Covent  Garden,  to 
spread  a  meteorological  register  upon  the  writ- 
ing-table, to  open  Gavin  Douglas  his  '  Palice  of 
Honour'  in  the  window-seat — and  the  picture 
is  finished. 


THE   NEW  CHESTERFIELD. 

T  ORD  CHESTERFIELD  detested  prov- 
-*-'  erbs.  For  him  they  were  not  so  much  the 
wit  of  one  man  and  the  wisdom  of  many,  as  the 
cheap  rhetoric  of  the  vulgar,  to  which  no  person 
of  condition  could  possibly  condescend.  Yet 
it  is  his  Lordship's  misfortune  to  suggest  one  of 
the  homeliest.  Nothing  so  well  describes  the 
state  of  his  modern  reputation  as  the  familiar 
adage,  '  Give  a  dog  a  bad  name,  and  hang  him.' 
Dr.  Johnson,  who  had  more  or  less  valid  rea- 
sons for  antagonism,  characterized  the  famous 
letters  in  one  of  those  vigorous  verdicts,  the 
compactness  of  which  has  sometimes  been  al- 
lowed to  condone  injustice.  They  taught,  he 
declared,  '  the  morals  of  a  courtesan,^  and  the 
manners  of  a  dancing-master.'  Cowper  fol- 
lowed suit.  Addressing  the  author  in  the  '  Pro- 
gress of  Error '  as  Petronius,  he  informed  him 
that  the  tears  of  the  Muses  would  '  scald  his 
memory ; '    and  after  apostrophizing  him  as  a 

1  Modern  usage  here  requires  the  alteration  of  a  word. 


148        Eighteenth  Century  l^ignettes. 

*  graybeard  corrupter  of  our  listening  youth/ 
and  a  '  polish'd  and  high-finish'd  foe  to  Truth,' 
adjured  him  finally  (and  rather  fatuously)  to 
send  from  the  shades  some  message  of  recanta- 
tion,—  in  all  of  which  there  is  more  of  poetic 
phraseology  than  energy  of  reproach.  With  the 
novelists  Lord  Chesterfield  has  hardly  fared 
better.  Dickens,  who  drew  upon  him  for  Sir 
John  Chester  in  *  Barnaby  Rudge,'  makes  that 
personage  declare  enthusiastically  that  '  in  every 
page  of  this  enlightened  writer,  he  finds  some 
captivating  hypocrisy  which  had  never  occurred 
to  him  before,  or  some  superlative  piece  of  self- 
ishness to  which  he  was  utterly  a  stranger.' 
The  picture  in  Thackeray's  *  Virginians '  is 
quieter  and  more  lifelike.  We  are  shown  Lord 
Chesterfield  at  Tunbridge,  when  Harry  War- 
rington makes  his  dibut  there  —  *  a  little  beetle- 
browed,  hook-nosed,  high-shouldered  gentle- 
man,' much  like  his  portrait  by  Gainsborough, 
sitting  over  his  wine  at  the  White  Horse  with 
M.  de  Pollnitz,  rallying  and  ironically  compli- 
menting that  ambiguous  adventurer,  making 
magnificent  apology  to  Mr.  Warrington  when 
he  has  unwittingly  insulted  him,  and,  at  a  later 
period,  with  his  customary  composure,  losing 
six  hundred  pounds  to  him  at  cards.  As  to  this 
last  detail   there   may   be  doubts.     Thackeray 


The  New  Chesterfield.  149 

probably  counted  upon  human  frailty  and  the 
inveteracy  of  an  ancient  habit,  but  Lord  Car- 
narvon says  that  Lord  Chesterfield  gave  up  play 
when  he  accepted  office,  and  he  had  been  Am- 
bassador at  the  Hague  and  Viceroy  in  Ireland 
years  before  he  met  Colonel  Esmond's  grandson 
at  M.  Barbeau's  much-frequented  ordinary  in 
the  Wells. 

Turning  to  the  two  quarto  volumes  which,  in 
March,  1774,  were  sent  forth  from  Golden  Square 
by  that  not  entirely  discreet  and  certainly  rapa- 
cious representative,  his  Lordship's  daughter- 
in-law,  one's  first  impression  is  that  they  have 
been  more  talked  about  in  the  light  of  Johnson's 
epigram  than  read  by  that  of  their  own  merits. 
No  one,  of  course,  would  affirm,  even  allowing 
for  the  corrupt  state  of  the  society  in  which  they 
were  written,  that  their  moral  tone,  in  one  re- 
spect especially,  is  defensible ;  nor  can  it  be 
denied,  even  supposing  them  to  emanate  from  a 
friend  rather  than  a  parent,  that  they  contain 
passages  which,  to  our  modern  taste,  are  more 
than  unpleasant.  But  without  in  the  least  at- 
tempting to  extenuate  these  objectionable  feat- 
ures of  the  correspondence,  it  is  but  just  to  its 
author  to  remember  that  it  was  never  intended 
either  for  the  public  instruction  or  for  the  public 
eye.     When  Mrs.  Eugenia  Stanhope  trusted  the 


150        Eigbteenih  Century  yignettes. 

letters  would  be  of  use  '  to  the  Youth  of  these 
Kingdoms,'  she  was  palpably  overlooking  this 
obvious  fact.  If  Lord  Chesterfield  had  pub- 
lished them  himself,  he  would  no  doubt  have 
considerably  edited  them  ;  but  it  is  extremely 
unlikely  that  he  would  ever  have  published  them 
at  all.  The  principles  which  he  desired  to  instil 
into  Philip  Stanhope  were  the  principles  of  the 
society  in  which  Philip  Stanhope  was  moving  — 
they  were  those  of  his  patron,  Lord  Albemarle, 
and  his  preceptress,  Lady  Hervey.  They  were 
intended  not  for  the  world  at  large,  but  for  the 
narrower  world  of  fashion. 

The  systematic  dissimulation  which  they  ap- 
pear to  inculcate  has  also  been  urged  against 
them.  But  here  again  it  seems  to  have  been 
forgotten  that  young  Stanhope  was  intended 
for  a  politician  and  statesman,  —  that  what  his 
father  most  desired  for  him  was  the  successes  of 
a  court  and  the  rewards  of  diplomacy.  After  all, 
the  volto  sciolto  and  pensieri  stretli,  the  '  looks 
loose  '  and  '  thoughts  close,'  ^  which  he  so  per- 
sistently enjoins,  are  no  more  than  the  unim- 
peachable Sir  Henry  Wotton  impressed  upon 
the  equally  unimpeachable  John  Milton.     Lord 

1  A  more  popular  rendering  of  this  useful  maxim  is  the 
*  heyes  hopen  and  mouth  shut '  of  Thomas  the  footman 
in '  The  Newcomes,'  ch.  xlvii. 


The  New  Chesterfield.  151 

Chesterfield  puts  his  points  coldly  and  cyni- 
cally ;  but  by  his  excellent  sermon  on  the 
suaviter  in  modo  and  the  fortiter  in  re,  he 
preaches  in  reality  little  beyond  that  necessary 
conciliation  of  the  feelings  of  others  which  is 
inculcated  by  almost  every  manual  of  ethics. 
Again,  if  he  harps  somewhat  wearisomely  upon 
*  les  manures,  les  biensiances,  les  agrdmens,  it  is 
precisely  because  these  were  the  weak  points  of 
his  pupil,  who,  master  at  twenty  of  Latin,  Greek, 
and  political  history,  speaking  readily  German, 
French,  and  Italian,  having  a  remarkable  mem- 
ory and  a  laudable  curiosity,  still  retained  an 
awkwardness  of  address  which  neither  Marcel 
nor  Desnoyers  could  wholly  overcome,^  and  a 
-defective  enunciation  which  would  have  resisted 
all  the  pebbles  of  Demosthenes.  For  the  rest, 
Lord  Chesterfield's  teaching  is,  in  great  measure, 
unexceptionable.  Its  worst  fault,  in  addition  to 
those  already  mentioned,  is  that  it  too  frequently 
confuses  being  with  seeming,  and  the  assump- 
tion of  a  virtue  with  the  actual  possession  of  it. 
But  many  of  its  injunctions  are  irreproachable, 
and  even  admirable  as  aphorisms  ;  and  those  to 
whom  their  note  of  worldly  wisdom  is  distasteful 
must  blame  not  so  much  the  writer,  as  Horace 

^  Desnoyers    was   the    fashionable   English   dancing- 
master  ;  Marcel,  the  French  one. 


152        Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

and  Cicero,  Bolingbroke  and  La  Bruy^re,  De 
Retz  and  La  Rochefoucault,  from  whom  he  had 
compiled  his  rules  for  conduct,  and  shaped  his 
scheme  of  life. 

When  Philip  Stanhope  died  at  six  and  thirty, 
neither  *  paitri  [sic]  de  graces  '  as  Lord  Chester- 
field hoped,  nor  particularly  distinguished  in 
statecraft  (he  was  simply  Envoy  at  Dresden), 
it  was  discovered  that  he  had  so  far  adopted  the 
policy  of  pensieri  stretti  as  to  have  been  married 
privately  for  some  years.  Probably  the  shock 
of  this  discovery  was  softened  to  his  father  (who 
nevertheless  behaved  liberally  to  the  widow) 
by  the  fact  that,  in  the  failure  of  his  plans  for 
his  son,  he  had  already  begun  to  interest  him- 
self in  the  training  of  another  member  of  his 
family,  a  little  boy  who  was  destined  to  be  his 
successor  in  the  earldom.  Seven  years  before 
Philip  Stanhope's  death  he  had  opened  a  new 
series  of  letters  with  a  godchild,  also  Philip 
Stanhope,  and  the  son  of  Mr.  Arthur  Stanhope, 
of  Mansfield,  in  Nottinghamshire.  Beginning 
when  the  boy  was  five  and  a  half,  the  corre- 
spondence was  continued  for  nine  years,  follow- 
ing him  from  '  Mr.  Robert's  Boarding  School  in 
Marybone  by  London '  to  the  house  in  South- 
ampton Row  of  his  tutor,  the  notorious  Dr. 
Dodd.     When  the  first  letter  was  written.  Lord 


The  New  Chesterfield.  153 

Chesterfield  was  sixty-seven,  and  the  last  was 
penned  only  three  years  before  his  death.  This 
is  the  collection  which,  after  being  mislaid  for  a 
long  period,  was  published  in  1889  by  the  late 
Lord  Carnarvon,  to  whom  it  had  been  presented 
by  his  father-in-law,  the  sixtk  Earl  of  Chester- 
field. It  contributes  not  a  little  to  the  revision 
of  the  popular  idea  formed  of  the  writer,  —  an 
idea,  it  may  be  added,  which,  upon  re-exami- 
nation of  the  earlier  correspondence,  had  already 
been  considerably  modified  by  such  critics  as 
Mr.  Abraham  Hayward  and  M.  Sainte-Beuve. 
Superficially,  the  letters  resemble  their  prede- 
cessors, and  the  outline  of  education  is  much 
the  same.  Little  Philip  was  to  be  '  perfectly 
master '  of  that  French  which  his  godfather  loved 
so  dearly,  and  in  which  he  wrote  so  often  and 
so  well ;  he  was  to  be  thoroughly  grounded  in 
History,  Geography,  Dancing,  Italian,  German  ; 
he  was  to  be  proficient  in  Greek  and  Latin, 
and  he  was  to  complete  his  studies  in  the  '  well- 
regulated  republic '  of  Geneva,  the  salutary 
austerity  of  which  was  then  usefully  tempered 
by  the  presence  of  Voltaire  and  the  French 
refugees.  Many  of  the  new  letters  reproduce 
the  old  precepts  ;  there  are  even  similarities  of 
thought  and  phraseology ;  and  though  the  volto 
sciolto  is   not  obtruded,  the  suaviter   in   modo 


'54       Eighteenth  Century  l^ignettes. 

is  still  persistently  advocated.  But  age  has 
brought  its  softening  influences  —  the  moral  tone 
is  ostensibly  higher,  and  the  old  worldly  savoir- 
faire  has  lost  much  of  its  ancient  cynicism. 
Some  of  the  axioms  which  Lord  Carnarvon 
quotes  are  remarkable  for  their  accent  of  ear- 
nestness ;  others,  as  he  observes,  are  '  almost 
theological '  in  tone.  Saint  Augustine,  for  ex- 
ample, could  hardly  say  more  than  this  :  '  Si  je 
pouvois  emp6cher  qu'il  n'y  eut  un  seul  mal- 
heureux  sur  la  Terre,  j'y  sacrifierois  avec  piaisir 
mon  bien,  mes  soins,  et  mSme  ma  sant6.  C'est 
le  grand  devoir  de  I'homme,  surtout  de  I'homme 
Chretien.'  The  next  is  nearer  to  the  elder 
manner :  '  Ayez  une  grande  Charity  pour 
Tamour  de  Dieu  et  une  extreme  politesse  pour 
I'amour  de  vous  mfime.'  And  here  is  a  graver 
utterance  than  either :  '  God  has  been  so  good 
as  to  write  in  all  our  hearts  the  duty  that  he  ex- 
pects from  us,  which  is  adoration  and  thanks- 
giving and  doing  all  the  good  we  can  to  our 
fellow  creatures.' 

It  is  extraordinary  to  note  what  an  infinity  of 
trouble  Lord  Chesterfield  took  to  arouse  and 
amuse  his  little  pupil.  Sometimes  the  letter  is 
an  anecdote,  biographical  or  historical ;  some- 
times a  cunningly  contrived  French  vocabulary, 
one  of  which,  inter  alia,  comprehensively  defines 


The  New  Chesterfield.  155 

*  Les  Graces'  as  '  Something  gracefull,  genteel, 
and  engaging  in  the  air  and  figure.'  Others  (like 
the  admirable  papers  in  '  The  World  ')  denounce 
the  prevailing  vice  of  drunkenness.  *  Fuyez  le 
vin,  car  c'est  un  poison  lent,  mais  sur.'  Occa- 
sionally a  little  diagram  aids  the  exposition,  as 
when  a  rude  circle,  -w'wh.  a  tiny  figure  at  top, 
stands  for  *  ie  petit  Stanhope '  and  '  ses  anti- 
podes ; '  in  other  cases,  the  course  of  instruction 
in  politeness  and  public  speaking  is  diversified 
by  definitions  of  similes  and  metaphors,  epigrams, 
anagrams,  and  logogriphes.  Finally,  there  is  a 
complete  treatise,  in  fourteen  epistles,  on  the 

*  Art  of  Pleasing,'  from  which  we  extract  the 
following  on  wit  and  satire : 

'  When  wit  exerts  itself  in  satyr  it  is  a  most 
malignant  distemper ;  wit  it  is  true  may  be 
shown  in  satyr,  but  satyr  does  not  constitute 
wit,  as  most  fools  imagine  it  does.  A  man  of 
real  wit  will  find  a  thousand  better  occasions  of 
showing  it.  Abstain  therefore  most  carefully 
from  satyr,  which  though  it  fall  upon  no  particu- 
lar person  in  company,  and  momentarily  from 
the  malignity  of  the  human  heart,  pleases  all ; 
upon  reflexion  it  frightens  all  too,  they  think  it 
may  be  their  turn  next,  and  will  hate  you  for 
what  they  find,  you  could  say  of  them  more, 
than  be  obliged  to  you  for  what  you  do  not 


156       Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

say.  Fear  and  hatred  are  next  door  neighbours. 
The  more  wit  you  have  the  more  good  natur^ 
and  politeness  you  must  show,  to  induce  people 
to  pardon  your  superiority,  for  that  is  no  easy 
matter.' 

Alas !  and  alas  1  that  so  much  labour  and 
patience  should  have  been  lost.  For  Philip  the 
Second,  though  he  made  no  secret  marriage,  was 
not  a  much  greater  success  than  Philip  the  First. 
He  turned  out  a  commonplace  country-gentle- 
man, amiable,  methodical,  agricultural,  but 
wholly  overshadowed  and  obliterated  by  the 
fame  of  the  accomplished  statesman  and  orator 
who  had  directed  his  studies. 

'  The  bows  of  eloquence  are  buried  with  the 
Archers.'  It  is  impossible,  even  with  the  aid  of 
the  phonograph,  to  recapture  the  magnetic  per- 
sonality, the  fervour  of  gesture  that  winged  the 
words  and  carried  conviction  to  the  hearer. 
Equally  impossible  is  it,  in  this  age  of  egotisms 
and  eccentricities  that  pass  for  character,  to 
realize  the  fascination  of  those  splendid  manners 
for  which  Lord  Chesterfield  was  celebrated. 
The  finished  elegance,  the  watchful  urbanity, 
the  perfect  ease  and  self-possession,  which 
Fielding  commended,  and  Johnson  could  not 
contest,  are  things  too  foreign  to  our  rest- 
less over-consciousness  to  be  easily  intelligible. 


The  New  Chesterfield.  157 

But  we  can  at  least  call  up  —  not  without  com- 
passionate admiration  —  the  pathetic  picture  of 
the  deaf  old  gentleman  who  had  been  the  rival 
of  '  silver-tongued  Murray'  and  the  correspond- 
ent of  Montesquieu,  sitting  down  at  seventy  in 
his  solitary  study  at  Babiole^  to  write,  in  that 
wonderful  hand  of  which  Lord  Carnarvon  gives 
a  facsimile,  his  periodical  letter  of  advice  to  a 
peiil  bout  d'homme  at  Parson  Dodd's  in  South- 
ampton Row,  concerning  whose  career  in  life 
he  had  formed  the  fondest  —  and  the  vainest  — 
expectations. 

^  Babiole  was  His  Lordship's  country-house  at  Black- 
heath,  so  christened  in  imitation  of  Bagatelle,  the  seat  near 
Paris  of  his  friend  Madame  la  Marquise  de  Monconseil. 


A   DAY    AT  STRAWBERRY   HILL. 

npO  the  rigorous  exactitudes  of  modern  realism 
■■"  it  may  seem  an  almost  hopeless  task  to 
revive  the  details  of  a  day  in  a  Tw^ickenham 
Villa  when  George  the  Third  was  King.  And 
yet,  with  the  aid  of  Horace  Walpole's  letters,  of 
the  '  Walpoliana '  of  Pinkerton,  and,  above  all, 
of  the  catalogue  of  Strawberry  Hill  printed  by  its 
owner  in  1774,  there  is  no  insurmountable  diffi- 
culty in  deciding  what  must  probably  have  been 
the  customary  course  of  events.  Nothing  is 
needed  at  the  outset  but  to  assume  that  you  had 
arrived,  late  on  the  previous  night,  at  the  em- 
battled Gothic  building  Qn  the  Teddington 
Road,  and  that  the  fatigues  of  your  journey 
had  left  you  little  more  than  a  vague  notion  of 
your  host,  and  a  fixed  idea  that  the  breakfast 
hour  was  nine.  Then,  after  carrying  with  you 
into  the  chintz  curtains  of  the  Red  Bedchamber 
an  indistinct  recollection  of  Richardson's  draw- 
ings of  Pope  and  his  mother,  and  of  Berming- 
ham's  '  owl  cut  in  paper,'  which  you  dimly  make 


A  Day  at  Strawberry  Hill.         159 

out  with  your  candle  on  the  walls,  you  would  be 
waked  at  eight  next  morning  by  Colomb,  the 
Swiss  valet  (as  great  a  tyrant  over  his  master 
as  his  compatriot  Canton  in  the  '  Clandestine 
Marriage  '),  and  in  due  time  would  repair  to  the 
blue-papered  and  blue-furnished  Breakfast  Room, 
looking  pleasantly  on  the  Thames.  Here,  coast- 
ing leisurely  round  the  apartment,  you  would 
probably  pause  before  M.  de  Carmontel's 
double  picture  of  your  host's  dead  friend, 
Madame  du  Deffand,  and  her  relative  the 
Duchesse  de  Choiseul,  or  you  would  peer 
curiously  at  the  view  of  Madame  de  S^vign^'s 
hotel  in  the  '  Rue  Coulture  St.  Catherine.' 
Presently  would  come  a  patter  of  tiny  feet,  and 
a  fat,  and  not  very  sociable,  little  dog,  which  had 
once  belonged  to  the  said  Madame  du  Deffand, 
would  precede  its  master,  whom  you  would  hear 
walking,  with  the  stiff  tread  of  an  infirm  person, 
from  his  bedroom  on  the  floor  above.  Shortly 
afterwards  would  enter  a  tall,  slim,  frail-looking 
figure  in  a  morning-gown,  with  a  high,  pallid 
forehead,  dark  brilliant  eyes  under  drooping 
lids,  and  a  friendly,  but  forced  and  rather  unpre- 
possessing smile.  Tonton  (as  the  little  dog  was 
called),  after  being  cajoled  into  a  semblance  of 
cordiality,  would  be  lifted  upon  a  small  sofa  at 
his  master's    side,   the    tea-kettle   and    heater 


i6o       Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

would  arrive,  and  tea  would  be  served  in  cups 
of  fine  old  white  embossed  Japanese  china. 
And  then,  the  customary  salutations  exchanged 
and  over,  would  gradually  begin,  in  a  slightly 
affected  fashion,  to  which  you  speedily  grow 
accustomed,  that  wonderful  flow  of  talk  which 
(like  Praed's  Vicar's) 

'  Slipped  from  politics  to  puns, 

And  passed  from  Mahomet  to  Moses,'  — 

that  endless  stream  of  admirably  told  stories,  of 
recollections  graphic  and  humorous,  of  sallies 
and  bon  mots,  of  which  Horace  Walpole's  ex- 
traordinary correspondence  is  the  cooled  expres- 
sion, but  of  the  vivacity  and  variety  of  which, 
enhanced  as  they  were  by  the  changes  in  the 
speaker's  voice  and  look,  and  emphasized  by 
his  semi-French  gesticulation,  it  is  impossible 
to  give  any  adequate  idea.  A  glance  across  the 
river  would  suggest  an  anecdote  of  her  Grace 
the  Duchess  of  Queensberry  ;  a  falling  spoon,  a 
mot  by  Lady  Townshend.  Upon  yesterday's 
execution  at  Tyburn  would  follow  a  vivid  pict- 
ure of  the  deaths  of  Balmerino  and  Kilmarnock  ; 
or  a  reference  to  your  ride  from  London  of  the 
night  before,  would  usher  in  a  full  and  particu- 
lar account  how  the  voluble  and  fascinating 
gentleman   before   you,   with   the   great   chalk 


A  Day  at  Strawberry  Hill.         i6i 

stones  in  his  fingers,  was  once  all  but  shot 
through  the  head  by  the  highwayman  James 
Maclean. 

Breakfast  over,  and  a  liberal  bowl  of  bread- 
and-milk  tossed  out  of  window  to  the  troops  of 
squirrels  that  come  flocking  in  from  the  high 
trees  round  the  lawn,  your  host  would  invite 
you  to  make  the  tour  of  the  grounds,  adding  (if 
it  were  May)  that  his  favourite  lilacs  were  well 
worth  the  effort.  He  would  astonish  you  by 
going  out  in  his  slippers  and  without  a  hat;  and, 
in  reply  to  your  ill-concealed  astonishment, 
would  laughingly  compare  himself  to  the  Indian 
in  the  'Spectator'  who  said  he  was  'all  face.' 
Passing  by  the  Abbot's  garden,  with  its  bright 
parterres,  he  would  lead  you  to  the  pretty  cot- 
tage he  had  built  on  the  site  of  the  old  resi- 
dence of  his  deceased  tenant  Richard  Francklin, 
once  printer  of  that  scurrilous  '  Craftsman '  in 
which  Pulteney  and  Bolingbroke  had  so  persist- 
ently assailed  his  father.  In  its  sunny,  print- 
hung  tea-room,  with  the  '  Little  Library '  at 
the  side,  he  would  show  you  the  picture  of  his 
friend  Lady  Hervey,  once  the  '  beautiful  Molly 
Lepel'  of  Pulteney  and  Chesterfield's  ballad, 
and  would  tell  you  that  the  frame  was  carved  by 
the  same  Grinling  Gibbons  to  whom  we  owe  the 
clever  bronze  statue  of  King  James  the  Second 


1 62        Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

at  Whitehall.  Thence  you  would  pass  to  the 
chapel  in  the  wood,  with  its  stained-glass  pict- 
ures of  Henry  the  Third  and  his  Queen  from 
Bexhill  Church,  and  its  shrine  from  Santa  Maria 
Maggiore  at  Rome  ;  and  he  would  explain  that 
the  roof  was  designed  by  that  unimpeachable 
authority  in  Gothic,  Mr.  Chute  of  the  Vyne,  in 
Hampshire  ;  that  George  Augustus  Selwyn  had 
given  him  the  great  earthen  pot  at  the  door ; 
and  that  the  carved  bench  in  the  ante-chapel 
had  been  contrived  by  no  less  a  person  than 
the  son  of  the  famous  '  Ricardus  Aristarchus,' 
Master  of  Trinity,  the  — 

'  mighty  Scholiast,  whose  unwearied  pains 
Made  Horace  dull,  and  humbled  Milton's  strains  — ' 

as  he  would  quote  from  the  *  Dunciad '  of  the 
late  lamented  Mr.  Pope.  Richard  Bentley  the 
younger,  he  would  remind  you,  had  also  drawn 
some  excellent  illustrations  to  Gray  (the  originals 
of  which  he  will  show  you  later  in  the  library); 
and  meanwhile  he  invites  your  attention  at  the 
end  of  the  winding  walk  to  another  masterpiece 
from  the  same  ingenious  brain  —  a  huge  oaken 
seat  shaped  like  a  shell,  in  which  once  sat  to- 
gether three  of  the  handsomest  women  in  Eng- 
land,—  the  Duchess  of  Hamilton,  the  Duchess 
of  Richmond,  and  the  Countess  of  Ailesbury. 
If  you  were   still  intelligently  interested,  and 


A  Day  at  Strawberry  Hill.         163 

your  host  still  unfatigued  (for  he  is  capricious 
and  easily  tired),  you  would  pass  from  the  garden 
to  the  private  printing-press,  the  '  Officina  Ar- 
buteana '  as  he  christens  it,  next  the  neighbour- 
ing farmyard.  Here  you  would  be  introduced 
to  the  superintendent  and  occasional  secretary, 
Mr.  Thomas  Kirgate,  who,  if  so  minded,  would 
exhibit  to  yofi  a  proof  of  Miss  Hannah  More's 
poem  of  'Bishop  Bonner's  Ghost'  (which  his 
patron  is  kindly  setting  up  for  her),  or  then  and 
there  strike  you  off  a  piping-hot  *  pull '  of  the 
latest  quatrain  to  those  charming  Miss  Berrys 
who  are  now  inhabiting  '  Little  Strawberry '  hard 
by,  once  tenanted  by  red-faced,  good-humoured 
Mrs.  Clive.  As  you  return  at  last  to  the  house, 
your  guide  would  almost  certainly  pause  in  the 
Little  Cloister  at  the  entrance  beside  the  blue 
and  white  china  tub  for  goldfish  in  which  was 
drowned  that  favourite  cat  whose  fate  was  im- 
mortalized by  Gray ;  and,  lifting  the  label,  he 
would  read  the  poet's  words : 

'  *T  was  on  this  lofty  Vase's  side, 
Where  China's  gayest  Art  has  dy'd 

The  azure  Flow'rs,  that  blow. 
Demurest  of  the  tabby  kind, 
The  pensive  Selima  reclin'd, 

Gaz'd  on  the  Lake  below.'  ^ 

1  There  is  one  of  these  labels  in  the  Dyce  Collection  at 
South  Kensington. 


1 64        Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

Once  more  under  Bentley's  japanned  tin  lan- 
tern in  tiie  gloomy  little  hall,  your  host,  pending 
the  scribbling  of  half-a-dozen  pressing  letters  to 
Lady  Ossory,  Mr.  Pinkerton,  or  one  or  other 
of  his  many  correspondents,  would  beg  you  to 
await  him  in  the  Picture  Gallery.  Here,  long 
before  you  had  exhausted  your  admiration  of  the 
Emperor  "Vespasian  in  basalt,  or  the  incompara- 
ble Greek  Eagle  from  the  baths  of  Caracalla,  he 
would  resume  his  post  of  cicerone,  leading  you 
almost  at  once  to  the  portraits  of  his  three  beau- 
tiful nieces,  Edward  Walpole's  daughters,  one 
of  whom,  painted  by  Reynolds,  had  been  for- 
tunate enough  to  marry  King  George's  own 
brother,  William  Henry,  Duke  of  Gloucester  (a 
fact  of  which  her  uncle  Horace  is  ill-disguisedly 
proud).  From  the  Gallery  you  would  pass  to 
the  Round  Drawing-Room,  whose  chief  glory 
was  Vasari's  '  Bianca  Capello  ; '  and  thence  to 
the  adjoining  Tribune,  a  curious  yellow-lit  cham- 
ber, with  semicircular  recesses,  in  which  were 
accumulated  most  of  the  choicest  treasures  of 
Strawberry,  —  miniatures  by  Cooper  and  the  Oli- 
yers,  enamels  by  Petitot  and  Zincke,  gems  from 
Italy,  bas-reliefs  in  ivory,  coins  and  seal-rings 
and  reliquaries  and  filigree  work,  in  the  dis- 
persed profusion  of  which  you  would  afterwards 
dimly  recall  such  items  as  a  silver  bell  carved 


A  Day  at  Strawberry  Hill.         165 

with  masks  and  insects  by  Benvenuto  Cellini,  a 
missal  attributed  to  Raphael,  a  bronze  Caligula 
with  silver  eyes,  and  a  white  snufF-box  with  a 
portrait  purporting  to  be  a  gift  from  Madame  de 
Sevigne  in  the  Elysian  Fields,  but  sent  in  real- 
ity by  the  faithful  Madame  du  Deffand.  Each 
object  would  bring  its  train  of  associations  and 
traditions  ;  and  the  fading  of  the  '  all-golden  af- 
ternoon '  would  find  your  companion  still  prom- 
ising fresh  marvels  in  the  yet  unexplored  rooms 
beyond,  where  are  the  speculum  of  cannel  coal 
once  used  by  the  notorious  starmonger.  Dr. 
John  Dee  ;  the  red  hat  of  his  Eminence  Cardi- 
nal Wolsey  ;  and  the  very  spurs  worn  by  King 
William  the  Third,  of  immortal  memory,  at  the 
ever-glorious  Battle  of  the  Boyne. 

With  four  o'clock  would  come  dinner,  eaten 
probably  in  the  Refectory,  a  room  consecrated 
chiefly  to  the  family  portraits,  conspicuous  among 
which,  in  blue  velvet,  was  your  host  by  Rich- 
ardson. The  repast  was  '  of  Attic  taste,'  but 
with  very  little  wine,  as  Walpole  himself  drank 
nothing  but  iced  water,  and  '  coffee  upstairs ' 
was  ordered  with  such  promptitude  as  to  afford 
the  visitor  but  scanty  leisure  for  lingering  over 
the  bottle.  About  five  you  migrated  to  the 
Round  Drawing-Room,  where  your  entertainer, 
after  recommending  you  to  replenish  your  box 


1 66        Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

with  Fribourg's  snuff  from  a  canister  of  which 
the  hiding-place  was  an  ancient  marble  urn  in 
the  window-seat,  would  take  up  his  station 
on  the  sofa,  and  resume  his  inexhaustible  flood 
of  memories  and  reflections,  always  bright,  often 
striking,  and  never  wearisome.  Once,  perhaps, 
he  would  rise  to  exhibit  the  closet  he  had  built 
for  Lady  Di.  Beauclerk's  seven  drawings  in 
soot-water  to  his  own  tragedy  of  the  '  Mysteri- 
ous Mother  ; '  or  he  would  adjourn  for  an  hour 
to  the  Library,  to  turn  over  his  unrivalled  col- 
lection of  Hogarth's  prints;  or  to  show  you 
Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu's  '  Milton,'  or 
;he  identical  '  Iliad '  and  '  Odyssey '  from  which 
Pope  made  his  translations,  or  the  long  row  of 
books  printed  at  the  '  Officina  Arbuteana.'  But 
he  would  gravitate  sooner  or  later  to  his  old 
vantage-ground  on  the  sofa,  whence,  unhasting, 
unresting,  he  would  discourse  most  excellent 
anecdote  into  the  small  hours,  when  the  chintz 
curtains  of  the  Red  Bedchamber  would  again 
receive  his  bewitched  and  bewildered,  but  still 
unsatiated,  visitor.  And  so  would  end  your 
day  at  Horace  Walpole's  Gothic  Castle  of  Straw- 
berry Hill. 


GOLDSMITH'S   LIBRARY. 

A  N  auctioneer's  catalogue  —  and  particularly 
■^^  an  auctioneer's  catalogue  more  than  a 
hundred  years  old  —  is  not,  at  first  sight,  the 
most  suggestive  of  subjects.  And  yet  that 
issued  in  July,  1774,  by  Mr.  Good,  of  121 
Fleet  Street,  still  possesses  considerable  inter- 
est. For  it  is  nothing  less  than  an  account,  bald, 
indeed,  and  only  moderately  literary,  of  the 
'  Houshold  [sic]  Furniture,  with  the  Select  Col- 
lection of  Scarce,  Curious  and  Valuable  Books, 
in  English,  Latin,  Greek,  French,  Italian  and 
other  Languages,  late  the  Library  of  Dr. 
Goldsmith,  Deceased.'  As  one  runs  over  the 
items,  one  seems  to  realize  the  circumstances. 
One  seems  almost  to  see  Mr.  Good's  unemo- 
tional assistants,  with  their  pens  behind  their 
ears,  and  their  ink-bottles  *  upon  the  excise  prin- 
ciple '  dangling  from  their  button-holes,  as  they 
peer  about  the  dingy  Chambers  at  Brick  Court, 
with  the  dark  little  closet  of  a  bedroom  at  the 
back  where  the  poor  Doctor  lay  and  died.  We 
can  imagine  them  sniffing  superciliously  at  the 
chief  pictorial  adornment,  '  The  Tragic  Muse, 


1 68        Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes . 

in  a  gold  frame  ; '  or  drawing  from  its  siieath, 
with  an  air  of  'prentice  connoisseurship,  '  the 
steel-hiited  sword,  inlaid  with  gold,'  or  *  the 
black-hilted  ditto,'  not  without  speculations  as 
to  how  those  weapons  would  adorn  their  own 
ungainly  persons  in  a  holiday  jaunt  to  White 
Conduit  House  or  Marybone  Gardens.  "We 
see  them  professionally  prodding  the  faded  ma- 
hogany sofa  '  covered  with  blue  morine '  which 
had  so  often  vibrated  under  the  nervous  twitch- 
ings  of  Johnson  ;  appraising  the  '  compass  card- 
tables  '  over  which  Boswell  had  dealt  trumps  to 
Reynolds ;  or  critically  weighing  the  teapot 
in  which  the  '  Jessamy  Bride'  had  more  than 
once  made  tea.  Their  sordid  commercial  figures 
must  have  crossed  and  re-crossed  before  '  the 
very  large  dressing-glass '  with  '  mahogany 
frame,'  which  only  a  few  weeks  past  had  re- 
flected the  'blue  velvet,'  and  the  'straw- 
coloured  '  and  '  silver-grey  tamboured  waist- 
coats'  for  which  honest  Mr.  "William  Filby,  at 
the  sign  of  the  Harrow  in  "Water  Lane,  was 
never  now  to  see  the  money.  No  doubt,  too, 
they  desecrated,  with  their  Fleet  Street  mud, 
that  famous  "Wilton  carpet  which  had  looked  so 
sumptuous  when  it  was  first  laid  down  but  half 
a  dozen  years  ago  ;  and,  if  they  were  at  all  like 
their  brethren  of  these   days,   they  must   have 


Goldsmith's  Library.  169 

pished  generally  over  the  rest  of  those  modest 
properties  which,  in  the  golden  epoch  when  the 
*Good  Natur'd  Man'  seemed  to  promise  per- 
petual prosperity,  had  excited  so  much  awe  and 
admiration  among  Goldsmith's  humbler  friends. 
'Not  much  to  tot  up  here.  Docket!' — says 
Mr.  Good's  young  man  to  his  fellow.  And 
we  may  fancy  Mr.  Docket  assenting  with  a 
contemptuous  extension  of  his  under  lip,  en- 
forced by  the  supplementary  propositioa  that 
they  should  at  once  moisten  their  unpromising 
labours  by  adjourning  to  a  pot  of  Parsons'  En- 
tire at  the  Tavern  by  the  Temple  Gates. 

As  for  the  books,  the  *  Select  Collection ' 
that  the  unsympathetic  stock-takers  turned  over 
so  irreverently  with  their  feet  as  they  lay  in  dusty 
ranges  on  the  floor,  it  must  be  feared  that 
worthy  Mr.  Good's  description  of  them  as 
'  scarce,  curious,  and  valuable '  is  more  credit- 
able to  his  business  traditions  than  his  literary 
insight.  Goldsmith  was  scarcely  a  book-lover 
in  the  sense  in  which  that  term  is  now  used. 
The  man  who,  as  Hawkins  relates,  could  tear 
half  a  dozen  leaves  out  of  a  volume  to  save  him- 
self the  trouble  of  transcription,  —  the  man  who 
underscored  objectionable  passages  with  his 
thumb-nail,  as  he  once  did  to  a  new  poem  that 
belonged   to    Reynolds  —  was   not   a    genuine 


170        Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

amateur  du  livre.  They  were  a  '  speculative 
lot '  in  all  probability,  the  '  Brick  Court  Li- 
brary ; '  and  no  doubt  bore  about  them  visibly 
the  bumps  and  bruises  of  their  transit  '  in  two 
returned  post  chaises '  to  the  remote  farm  at 
Hyde,  where  their  owner  laboured  at  his  vast 

*  Animated  Nature.'  Many  of  them  had  mani- 
festly been  collected  to  that  end.  Hill's 
'  Fossils,'  1748  ;  Pliny's  '  Historia  Naturalis,' 
1752  ;  Gessner  and  Aldrovandus  '  De  Quadru- 
pedibus ; '  Gouan's  '  Histoire  des  Poissons,' 
1770;  Bohadsch's  '  De  Animalibus  Marinis,' 
1761  ;  De  Geer's  '  Histoire  des  Insectes,' 
1771,  must  all  plainly  have  belonged  to  that 
series  of  purchases  for  the  nonce  which,  he 
says  in  his  preface,  had  so  severely  taxed  his 
overburdened  resources.  In  the  classics  he 
was  fairly  well  equipped  ;  and,  as  might  be 
expected,  he  had  many  of  the  British  poets, 
not  to  mention  two  copies  of  that  indispen- 
sable manual,  Mr.  Edward  Bysshe,  his  treatise 
of  the  rhyming  art.  But  it  is  in  French  liter- 
ature generally,  and  in  French  minstrels  and 
playwrights  in  particular,  that  his  store  is 
richest.  He  has  the  '  Encyclopedic,'  the 
'  Dictionnaire  '  and  '  Recueil  d'Anecdotes,'  the 

*  Dictionnaire  Litt^raire,'  the  *  Dictionnaire  Cri- 
tique,   Pittoresque  et  Sentencieux,'  the  '  Die- 


Goldsmith's  Library.  171 

tionnaire  Gentilhomme  ; '  he  has  many  of  the 
ana  —  '  Parrhasiana,'  '  Ducatiana,'  '  Naudeana,' 
♦  Patiniana,'  although,  oddly  enough,  there  is 
no  copy  of  the  '  M^nagiana,'  which  not  only 
supplied  him  with  that  ancient  ballad  of  *  Mon- 
sieur de  la  Palice '  out  of  which  grew  '  Madam 
Blaize,'  but  also  with  the  little  poem  of  Bernard 
de  la  Monnoye,  which  he  paraphrased  so 
brightly  in  the  well-known  stanzas  beginning : 

'  Say,  cruel  Iris,  pretty  rake, 
Dear  mercenary  beauty, 
What  annual  offering  shall  I  make, 
Expressive  of  my  duty  ? ' 

He  has  the  works  of  Voltaire,  Diderot, 
Fontenelle,  Marmontel,  Voiture ;  he  has  the 
plays  of  Brueys,  La  Chauss^e,  Dancourt, 
Destouches  ;  he  has  many  of  the  madrigalists 
and  minor  versemen,  —  all  of  which  possessions 
tend  to  corroborate  that  suspected  close  study 
of  Gallic  authors  from  which,  as  many  hold, 
he  derived  not  a  little  of  the  unfailing  perspi- 
cuity of  his  prose,  and  most  of  the  brightness 
and  vivacity  of  his  more  familiar  verse.  Of 
his  own  works  —  and  the  fact  is  curious  when 
one  remembers  some  of  his  traditional  charac- 
teristics —  there  are  practically  no  examples,  at 
least   there  are   none   catalogued.     Their   sole 


1/2        Eighteenth  Century  l^ignettes. 

representative  is  an  imperfect  set  of  the  '  His- 
tory of  the  Earth  and  Animated  Nature,'  which 
had  only  recently  been  completed,  and  was 
published  posthumously.  Not  a  single  copy  of 
'  The  Vicar,'  of  '  She  Stoops  to  Conquer,'  of 
'The  Citizen  of  the  World,'  of  'The  Deserted 
Village'!  Not  even  a  copy  of  that  rarest  of 
rarities,  the  privately  printed  version  of  '  Edwin 
and  Angelina,'  which  its  author  told  his  friend 
Cradock  '  could  not  be  amended  '  —  although 
he  was  always  amending  it !  Of  course  it  is 
possible  that  his  own  writings  had  been  with- 
drawn from  Mr.  Good's  catalogue,  or  that  they 
are  included  in  the  *  and  others  '  of  unspecified 
lots.  But  this  is  scarcely  likely,  and  it  may  be 
accepted  as  a  noteworthy  fact  that  one  of  the 
most  popular  authors  of  his  day  did  not,  at  his 
death,  possess  any  of  his  own  performances, 
with  the  exception  of  an  incomplete  specimen  of 
his  most  laborious  compilation.^  Besides  this, 
the  only  volumes  that  bear  indirectly  upon  his 
work  are  the  '  Memoirs '  of  the  Cardinal  de 
Retz,  which  he  had  used  in  '  The  Bee,'  the 
'  Lettres  Persanes'  of  Montesquieu,  which 
perhaps  prompted  '  The  Citizen  of  the  World,' 

1  Racine  was  in  similar  case.  In  the  recently  discov- 
ered inventory  of  his  effects,  there  is  not  a  single  copy  of 
bis  works. 


Goldsmith's  Library.  173 

and  the  '  Roman  Comique'  of  M.  Paul  Scar- 
ron,  which  he  had  been  translating  in  the  latter 
months  of  his  life  —  an  accident  which  has 
left  its  mark  in  his  last  poem,  the  admirable 
'  Retaliation ' : 

'  Of  old,  when  Scarron  his  companions  invited, 
Each  guest  brought  his  dish,  and  the  feast  was  united.' 

It  may  be  that  he  had  intended  to  prefix  a  bio-, 
graphical  sketch  or  memoir  to  his  version  of  the 
•  Comic  Romance,'  since  the  reference  here  is 
plainly  to  those  famous  picnic  suppers  in  the 
Marais,  to  which,  according  to  Scarron's  most 
recent  biographer,  M.  Charles  Baumet,  came  as 
guests,  but  '  chacun  apportant  son  plat,'  the  pink 
of  dames,  of  courtiers,  and  of  men  of  letters. 

"Where  did  they  go,  these  books  and  house- 
hold goods  of  '  Dr.  Goldsmith,  deceased  '  ? 
It  is  to  be  presumed  that  he  did  not  boast  a 
book-plate,  for  none,  to  our  knowledge,  has 
ever  been  advertised,  nor  is  there  any  record 
of  one  in  Lord  de  Tabley's  well-known  '  Hand- 
book,' so  that  the  existing  possessors  of  those 
precious  volumes,  in  the  absence  of  any  auto- 
graph inscription,  must  entertain  their  treasures 
unawares.  Of  his  miscellaneous  belongings,  the 
only  specimens  now  well-known  do  not  seem 
to  have  passed  under  the  hammer  of  the  Fleet 


1 74       Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

Street  auctioneer.  His  favourite  chair,  a  dark, 
hollow-seated,  and  somewhat  penitential  look- 
ing piece  of  furniture,  is  preserved  at  South 
Kensington,  where,  some  years  since,  it  was 
sketched,  in  company  with  his  cane — perhaps 
the  very  cane  that  once  crossed  the  back  of 
Evans  the  bookseller  —  by  Mr.  Hugh  Thom- 
son, the  clever  young  Irish  artist  to  whom  we 
are  indebted  for  the  most  successful  of  recent 
illustrated  editions  of  the  '  Vicar  of  Wakefield.' 
Neither  chair  nor  cane  is  in  the  Good  Catalogue, 
nor  does  it  make  any  mention  of  the  worn  old 
wooden  writing-desk  which  was  presented  to 
Sir  Henry  Cole's  museum  by  Lady  Hawes. 
Her  husband,  Sir  Benjamin  Hawes,  once  Under 
Secretary  at  War,  was  the. grandson  of  William 
Hawes,  the  '  surgeon  apothecary '  in  the 
Strand,  who  was  called  in,  late  on  that  Friday 
night  in  March,  when  the  poor  Doctor  was 
first  stricken  down  with  the  illness  which  a 
few  days  later  terminated  fatally.  William 
Hawes,  a  worthy  and  an  able  man,  who  sub- 
sequently obtained  a  physician's  degree,  and 
helped  to  found  the  Humane  Society,  was  the 
author  of  the  little  pamphlet,  now  daily  grow- 
ing rarer,  entitled  '  An  Account  of  the  late  Dr. 
Goldsmith's  Illness,  so  far  as  relates  to  the  Ex- 
hibition of  Dr.  James's  Powders,  etc.,  1774' 


Goldsmith's  Library.  175 

[April].  He  dedicated  it  to  Burke  and  Rey- 
nolds ;  and  he  published  it  (he  says)  partly  to 
satisfy  curiosity  as  to  the  circumstances  of 
Goldsmith's  death,  partly  to  vindicate  his  own 
professional  conduct  in  the  matter.  His  narra- 
tive, in  which  discussion  of  the  popular  nos- 
trum upon  which  Goldsmith  so  obstinately 
relied  not  unnaturally  occupies  a  considerable 
part,  is  too  familiar  for  repetition ;  and  his  re- 
marks on  Goldsmith  as  a  writer  are  of  the  sign- 
post order.  But  his  personal  testimony  to  the 
character  of  '  his  late  respected  and  ingenious 
friend'  may  fitly  close  this  paper:  *  His  [Gold- 
smith's] humanity  and  generosity  greatly  ex- 
ceeded the  narrow  limits  of  his  fortune  ;  and 
those  who  were  no*  judges  of  the  literary  merit 
of  the  Author,  could  not  but  love  the  Man  for 
that  benevolence  by  which  he  was  so  strongly 
characterised.' 


IN   COWPER'S  ARBOUR. 

A  MONG  its  many  drawbacks  controversy 
"^^  has  this  in  particular,  that  it  sometimes 
embroils  us  with  our  closest  friends.  Writing 
recently  of  Lord  Chesterfield,  we  found  occasion 
to  comment  upon  certain  couplets  which  the 
poet  of  the  '  Progress  of  Error '  addressed  to 
his  Lordship  concerning  his  celebrated  '  Let- 
ters.' What  was  said  amounted  to  no  more 
than  that  Cowper,  in  this  instance  at  least,  had 
not  proved  himself  a  Juvenal,  —  a  sentiment 
which,  seeing  that  his  most  modern  biographer, 
Mr.  Goldwin  Smith,  accuses  him,  as  a  satirist, 
of  brandishing  a  whip  without  a  lash,  could 
scarcely  be  regarded  as  extravagant  condemna- 
tion. Not  the  less,  it  has  lain  sorely  upon  our 
conscience.  Of  all  the  lettered  figures  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  none  is  more  dear  to  us 
than  the  gentle  recluse  of  the  sleepy  little  town 
by  the  Ouse.  What  I  —  the  captivating  letter- 
writer,  the  inventor  of  the  immortal  '  John 
Gilpin,'  the  delightful  '  divagator '  of  the  *  Task ' 
and  the  tea-urn,  the  kindly  proprietor  of  those 


In  Cowper's  Arbour.  177 

'  canonized  pets  of  literature,'  Puss  and  Bess 
and  Tiney  —  how,  upon  such  a  theme,  could 
one  excusably  utter  things  harsh  or  censorious  ! 
It  is  impossible  to  picture  him,  when  the  cur- 
tains had  fallen  over  those  two  windows  that 
looked  upon  the  three-cornered  market-place  at 
Olney,  —  his  head  decorated  (it  may  be)  with 
the  gaily  ribboned  cap  which  had  been  worked 
for  him  by  his  cousin  Lady  Hesketh,^  his  eyes 
milder  than  they  seem  in  Romney's  famous 
portrait,  and  placidly  reading  the  •  Public  Ad- 
vertiser' to  the  click-click  of  Mrs.  Unwin's 
stocking-needles,  — without  being  smitten  by  a 
feeling  of  remorse.  And  opportunity  for  the 
expression  of  such  remorse  arrives  pleasantly 
with  an  old-fashioned  octavo  which  supplies  the 
pretext  for  a  palinode  in  prose. 

Its  title,  'writ  large,'  is  '  Cowper,  Illustrated 
by  a  Series  of  Views,  in,  or  near,  the  Park  of 
Weston-Underwood,  Bucks  ; '  and  it  is  lavishly 
'  embellished  '  with  those  mellow  old  plates 
which  denote  that  steel  had  not  yet  supplanted 
copper.     The  artists  and  engravers  were  James 

^  A  writing-cap  worn  by  Cowper,  his  watch,  a  seal- 
ring  given  to  him  by  his  cousin  Theodora  (his  first  love), 
and  a  ball  of  worsted  which  he  wound  for  Mrs.  Unwin, 
were  among  the  relics  exhibited  in  the  South  Gallery 
of  the  Guelph  Exhibition  of  1891. 

12 


178       Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

Storer  and  John  Greig,  topographical  chalco- 
graphers  of  some  repute  in  the  days  of  con- 
ventional foregrounds,  and  trees  that  looked 
like  pressed-out  patterns  in  seaweed.  But 
the  'picturesque'  designs  give  us  a  good  idea 
of  the  landscape  that  Cowper  sav\:  when  he 
walked  from  Silver  End  at  Olney  to  his  friends 
the  Throckmortons  (the  '  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Frog' 
of  his  letters)  at  Weston  House.  Here  is  the 
long  bridge  of  '  The  Task,' 

*  That  with  its  wearisome,  but  needful  length, 
Bestrides  the  wintry  flood  ' 

between  Olney  and  Emberton  ;  here,  bosomed 
in  its  embowering  trees,  the  little  farmhouse 
called  the  '  Peasant's  Nest.'  Here,  again,  in 
the  valley,  and  framed  between  the  feathery 
branches  of  the  shrubbery,  is  the  spire  of  Olney 
Church,  from  which  one  may  almost  fancy  that 

'  the  sound  of  cheerful  bells 
Just  undulates  upon  the  list'ning  ear ; ' 

here,  standing  out  whitely  from  the  yews  and 
evergreens  of  The  Wilderness,  the  urn  with  the 
epitaph  of  the  dog  Neptune.  Further  on  (a  lovely 
little  landscape)  is  the  clump  of  poplars  by 
the  water  (not  the  poplars  of  the  poem :  those 
were  already  felled)  which  the  poet  mistook  for 


In  Cowper's  Arbour.  179 

elms  ;  and  here,  lastly,  is  Cowper's  own  cottage 
at  Weston,  which,  with  its  dormer  windows, 
and  its  vines  and  jasmines,  might  have  served  as 
a  model  for  Randolph  Caldecott  or  Kate  Green- 
away.  And,  behold  1  ( '  blest  be  the  art  that 
can  immortalize  1 ')  here  is  Mrs.  Unwin  in  a 
high  waist  entering  at  the  gate,  while  Cowper 
bids  her  welcome  from  the  doorway. 

Of  Olney  itself  there  are  not  many  glimpses 
in  the  little  volume.  But  the  vignette  on  the 
titlepage  shows  the  tiny  '  boudoir '  or  summer- 
house,  '  not  much  bigger  than  a  sedan  chair,' 
which  stood  —  nay,  stands  yet,  —  about  midway 
between  the  red-brick  house  on  the  market- 
place and  what  was  once  John  Newton's  vicar- 
age. It  is  still,  say  the  latest  accounts,  kept  up 
by  its  present  owner,  and  its  walls  and  ceiling 
are  covered  with  the  autographs  of  pious  pil- 
grims. In  Storer's  plate  you  look  in  at  the  open 
door,  catching,  through  the  window  on  the 
opoosite  side,  part  of  the  parsonage  and  of  the 
wall  in  which  was  constructed  the  gate  that 
enabled  Cowper  at  all  times  to  communicate 
with  his  clerical  friend.  Its  exact  dimensions 
are  given  as  six  feet  nine  by  five  feet  five  ;  and 
he  must  have  been  right  in  telling  Lady  Hes- 
keth  that  if  she  came  to  see  him  they  should  be 
'  as  close-pack'd  as  two  wax  figures  in  an  old- 


i8o        Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

fashioned  picture-frame.'  A  trap-door  in  the 
floor  covered  a  receptacle  in  which  the  previous 
tenant,  an  apothecary,  had  stored  his  bottles ; 
and  here,  '  in  the  deep-delved  earth,'  one  of 
Cowper's  v^^isest  counsellors,  the  Rev.  William 
Bull  of  Newport  Pagnell,  the  *  Carissimus 
Taurorum '  of  the  letters,  the 

'  smoke-inhaling  Bull, 
Always  filling,  never  full,' 

was  wont  to  deposit  his  pipes  and  his  tobacco. 
'  Having  furnished  it  with  a  table  and  two 
chairs,'  says  Cowper,  '  here  I  write  all  that  I 
write  in  summer  time,  whether  to  my  friends 
or  the  public.  It  is  secure  from  all  noise,  and  a 
refuge  from  all  intrusion,  for  intruders  sometimes, 
trouble  me  in  the  winter  evenings  at  Olney,  but 
(thanks  to  my  boudoir  I)  I  can  now  hide  myself 
from  them.' 

The  summer  house,  it  has  been  stated,  is  still 
standing.  But  of  another  favourite  haunt  of  Cow- 
per, which  preceded  and  co-existed  with  it,  there 
are  now  no  traces.     This  was  the  greenhouse. 

"T  is  a  bower  of  Arcadian  sweets, 
Where  Flora  is  still  in  her  prime, 
A  fortress  to  which  she  retreats 

From  the  cruel  assaults  of  the  clime '  — 


In  Cowper's  Arbour.  i8i 

he  writes,  in  his  favourite  rocking-horse  metre, 
and  most  conventional  language,  bidding  his 
Mary  remark  the  beauty  of  the  pinks  which  it 
has  preserved  through  the  frosts  ;  and  in  mid- 
July,  when  the  floor  was  carpeted,  and  the  sun 
was  excluded  by  an  awning  of  mats,  it  became 
'  the  pleasantest  retreat  in  Olney.'  '  We  eat, 
drink,  and  sleep,  where  we  always  did,'  he  says 
to  Newton  ;  '  but  here  we  spend  all  the  rest  of 
our  time,  and  find  that  the  sound  of  the  wind  in 
the  trees,  and  the  singing  of  birds,  are  much  more 
agreeable  to  our  ears  than  the  incessant  barking 
of  dogs  and  screaming  of  children,'  from  both 
of  which,  it  may  be  observed,  they  suffered 
considerably  in  the  front  of  the  house.  Two 
years  later  he  tells  Mr.  Unwin  that  '  our  sever- 
est winter,  commonly  called  the  spring,  is  now 
over,  and  I  find  myself  seated  in  my  favourite 
recess,  the  greenhouse.  In  such  a  situation,  so 
silent,  so  shady,  where  no  human  foot  is  heard, 
and  where  only  my  myrtles  presume  to  peep  in 
at  the  window,  you  may  suppose  I  have  no 
interruption  to  complain  of,  and  that  my  thoughts 
are  perfectly  at  my  command.  But  the  beauties 
of  the  spot  are  themselves  an  interruption,  my 
attention  being  called  upon  by  those  very  myrtles, 
by  a  double  row  of  grass  pinks,  just  beginning 
to  blossom,  and  by  a  bed  of  beans   already  in 


1 82        Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

bloom  ;  and  you  are  to  consider  it,  if  you  please, 
as  no  small  proof  of  my  regard,  that,  though 
you  have  so  many  powerful  rivals,  I  disengage 
myself  from  them  all,  and  devote  this  hour 
entirely  to  you.' 

Later  still  —  a  year  later —  he  writes  to  New- 
ton :  *  My  greenhouse  is  never  so  pleasant  as 
when  we  are  just  upon  the  point  of  being  turned 
out  of  it.  The  gentleness  of  the  autumnal  suns, 
and  the  calmness  of  this  latter  season,  make  it 
a  much  more  agreeable  retreat  than  we  ever 
find  it  in  the  summer ;  when,  the  winds  being 
generally  brisk,  we  cannot  cool  it  by  admitting 
a  sufficient  quantity"  of  air,  without  being  at  the 
same  time  incommoded  by  it.  But  now  I  sit 
with  all  the  windows  and  the  door  wide  open, 
and  am  regaled  with  the  scent  of  every  flower, 
in  a  garden  as  full  of  flowers  as  I  have  known 
how  to  make  it.  We  keep  no  bees,  but  if  I 
lived  in  a  hive,  I  should  hardly  hear  more  of 
their  music.  All  the  bees  in  the  neighbourhood 
resort  to  a  bed  of  mignonette,  opposite  to  the 
window,  and  pay  me  for  the  honey  they  get  out 
of  it  by  a  hum,  which,  though  rather  monoto- 
nous, is  as  agreeable  to  my  ear  as  the  whistling 
of  my  linnets.  All  the  sounds  that  Nature  utters 
are  delightful,  at  least  in  this  country.'  But  he 
goes  on,  nevertheless,  to  except  the  braying  of 


In  Cowper's  Arbour.  183 

an  ass ;  and  from  another  letter  it  seems  that 
the  serene  quietude  of  his  bower  was  at  times 
invaded  by  the  noise  of  a  quadruped  of  this 
kind  (inimical  to  poets  I)  which  belonged  to  a 
neighbour. 

It  was  in  passing  from  the  greenhouse  to  the 
barn  that  Cowper  encountered  the  viper  of  that 
delightful  '  lusus  poeticus,'  the  *  Colubriad  ; ' 
and  other  memories  cluster  about  this  fragrant 
paradise.  Here  '  lived  happy  prisoners '  the 
two  goldfinches  celebrated  in  *  The  Faithful 
Bird  ; '  here  he  wrote  '  The  Task,'  and,  accord- 
ing to  Mr.  Thomas  Wright,  of  Olney,  it  is  to 
the  stimulating  environment  of  its  myrtles  and 
mignonette  that  we  owe,  if  not  the  germ,  at 
least  the  evolution,  of  '  John  Gilpin/  Every 
one  knows  how,  in  the  current  story,  Lady 
Austen's  diverting  narrative  of  the  way  in  which 
a  certain  citizen  of  the  Chepe,  Beyer  by  name, 
rode  out  to  celebrate  the  anniversary  of  his  mar- 
riage, gradually  seduced  her  listener  from  the 
moody  melancholy  which  was  fast  overclouding 
him  '  into  a  loud  and  hearty  peal  of  laughter.'  It 
'  made  such  an  impression  on  his  mind  that  at 
night  he  could  not  sleep  ;  and  his  thoughts  hav- 
ing taken  the  form  of  rhyme,  he  sprang  from 
bed,  and  committed  them  to  paper,  and  in  the 
morning   brought   down    to    Mrs.    Unwin   the 


184      Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

crude  outline  of  "John Gilpin."'  Only  the  out- 
line of  it,  however.  'All  that  day  and  for  several 
days  he  secluded  himself  in  the  greenhouse, 
and  went  on  with  the  task  of  polishing  and  im- 
proving what  he  had  written.  As  he  filled  his 
slips  of  paper  he  sent  them  across  the  Market- 
place to  Mr.  Wilson,  to  the  great  delight  and 
merriment  of  that  jocular  barber,  who  on  several 
other  occasions  had  been  favoured  with  the  first 
sight  of  some  of  Cowper's  smaller  poems.  This 
version  of  the  origin  of  "John  Gilpin"  differs,' 
we  are  aware,  from  the  one  generally  received, 
which  represents  the  famous  ballad  as  having 
been  commenced  and  finished  in  a  night;  but 
that  the  facts  here  stated  are  accurate  we  have 
the  authority  of  Mrs.  Wilson  ;  moreover,  it  has 
always  been  said  in  Olney  that  "  John  Gilpin  " 
was  written  in  the  "greenhouse,"  and  that  the 
first  person  who  saw  the  complete  poem,  and 
consequently  the  forerunner  of  that  noble  army 
who  made  merry  over  its  drolleries,  was  William 
Wilson  the  barber.'  ^ 

1  Wilson  was  a  man  of  considerable  intelligence,  and 
a  local  'character.'  When  in  1781  he  joined  the  Baptists, 
he  declined  to  dress  Lady  Austen's  hair  on  Sundays. 
Consequently  she  was  obliged  to  call  him  in  on  Saturday 
evenings,  and  once  had  to  sit  up  all  night  to  prevent  the 
disarrangement  of  her  '  head.* 


In  Cowper's  Arbour.  185 

Cowper  has  been  styled  by  a  recent  editor 
the  best  of  English  letter-writers,  a  term  which 
Scott  applied  to  Walpole,  and  it  has  been  ap- 
plied to  others.  Criticism  loses  its  balance  in 
these  superlatives.  To  be  the  best  —  to  use  a 
schoolboy  illustration  —  is  to  have  the  highest 
marks  all  round.  For  epistolary  vigour,  for  vi- 
vacity, for  wit,  for  humour,  for  ease,  for  sim- 
plicity, for  subject  —  can  you  give  Cowper  the 
highest  marks  ?  The  answer  obviously  must 
be  '  no.'  Other  writers  excel  him  in  subject, 
in  wit,  in  vigour.  But  you  can  certainly  give 
him  high  marks  for  humour ;  and  you  can  give 
him  very  high  marks  for  simplicity  and  unaffect- 
edness.  He  is  one  of  the  most  unfeigned,  most 
easy,  most  natural  of  English  letter-writers.  In 
the  art  of  shedding  a  sedate  playfulness  over  the 
least  promising  themes,  in  magnifying  the  inci- 
dents of  his  '  set  gray  life '  into  occurrences 
worthy  of  record,  in  communicating  to  his  page 
all  the  variations  of  mood  that  sweep  across  him 
as  he  writes,  he  is  unrivalled.  Mandeville  chris- 
tened Addison  a  parson  in  a  tye-wig ;  Cowper 
(at  his  best)  is  a  humourist  in  a  nightcap.  It 
would  be  easy  to  select  from  his  correspondence 
passages  that  show  him  in  all  these  aspects  — 
morbid  and  gloomy  to  Newton,  genial  and 
friendly  to   Hill  and  Unwin,  confidential  and 


1 86        Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

caressing  to  Lady  Austen  and  Lady  Hesketh. 
But  it  is  not  uncommon  for  him  to  vary  his  tone 
to  each  of  these,  for  which  reason  we  close  with 
an  epistle  to  that  austere  friend  and  monitor 
who  has  perhaps  been  credited  with  a  more 
baleful  influence  over  his  hypochondriac  corre- 
spondent than  is  strictly  borne  out  by  the  evi- 
dence. The  reader  may  be  told,  since  he  must 
speedily  discover  it,  that  the  following  letter 
from  Cowper  to  John  Newton,  like  the  title- 
page  of  Mr.  Lowell's  '  Fable  for  Critics,'  is  in 
rhymed  prose : 

My  very  dear  Friend,  —  I  am  going  to 
send,  what  when  you  have  read,  you  may 
scratch  your  head,  and  say,  I  suppose,  there  's 
nobody  knows  whether  what  I  have  got  be 
verse  or  not ;  —  by  the  tune  and  the  time, 
it  ought  to  be  rhyme,  but  if  it  be,  did  you 
ever  see,  of  late  or  of  yore,  such  a  ditty 
before  ? 

I  have  writ  '  Charity,'  not  for  popularity,  but 
as  well  as  I  could,  in  hopes  to  do  good ;  and  if 
the  Reviewer  should  say  '  to  be  sure  the  gentle- 
man's Muse  wears  Methodist  shoes,  you  may 
know  by  her  pace  and  talk  about  grace,  that 
she  and  her  bard  have  little  regard  for  the  taste 
and  fashions,  and  ruling  passions,  and  hoiden- 


In  Cowper's  Arbour.  187 

ing  play,  of  the  modern  day ;  and  though  she 
assume  a  borrowed  plume,  and  now  and  then 
wear  a  littering  air,  'tis  only  her  plan  to 
catch,  if  she  can,  the  giddy  and  gay,  as  they 
go  that  way,  by  a  production  on  a  new  con- 
struction :  she  has  baited  her  trap,  and  hopes 
to  snap  all  that  may  come  with  a  sugar  plum.' 
—  His  opinion  in  this  will  not  be  amiss ; 
'tis  what  I  intend,  my  principal  end,  and,  if  I 
succeed,  and  folks  should  read,  till  a  few  are 
brought  to  a  serious  thought,  I  shall  think  I 
am  paid  for  all  I  have  said  and  all  I  have 
done,  though  I  have  run  many  a  time,  after 
a  rhyme,  as  far  as  from  hence  to  the  end  of 
my  sense,  and  by  hook  or  crook,  write 
another  book,  if  I  live  and  am  here,  another 
year. 

I  have  heard  before  of  a  room  with  a  floor 
laid  upon  springs,  and  such  like  things,  with  so 
much  art  in  every  part,  that  when  you  went  in 
you  was  forced  to  begin  a  minuet  pace,  with  an 
air  and  a  grace,  swimming  about,  now  in  and 
now  out,  with  a  deal  of  state,  in  a  figure  of 
eight,  without  pipe,  or  string,  or  any  such  thing  ; 
and  now  I  have  writ,  in  a  rhyming  fit,  what  will 
make  you  dance,  and,  as  you  advance,  will  keep 
you  still,  though  against  your  will,  dancing 
away,  alert  and  gay,  till  you  come  to  an  end  of 


1 88         Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

what  I  have  penn'd,  which  that  you  may  do, 
ere  Madam  and  you  are  quite  worn  out  with 
gigging  about,  I  take  my  leave,  and  here  you 
receive  a  bow  profound,  down  to  the  ground, 
from  your  humble  me  —  W.  C 


THE  QUAKER  OF  ART. 

A  BOVE  the  chimney-piece  in  the  Study  at 
'^~*-  Abbotsford,  and  therefore  on  Sir  Walter's 
right-hand  as  he  wrote,  hung — nay,  hangs,  if 
we  may  trust  the  evidence  of  a  photograph  be- 
fore us  —  a  copy  of  the  Schiavonetti-cum- Heath 
engraving  of  Thomas  Stothard's  once-popular 
*  Canterbury  Pilgrims.'  With  its  dark  oblong 
frame  and  gold  corner-ornaments,  it  must  still 
look  much  as  it  did  on  that  rainy  August  morn- 
ing described  in  Lockhart,  when  one  of  Scott's 
guests,  occupied  ostensibly  with  the  last  issues 
of  the  Bannatyne  Club,  sat  listening  in  turn  to 
the  patter  of  the  drops  on  the  pane,  and  the 
'  dashing  trot'  of  his  host's  pen  across  the  paper 
to  which  he  was  then  committing  the  first  series 
of  the  *  Tales  of  a  Grandfather.'  The  visitor 
(it  was  that  acute  and  ingenious  John  Ley- 
cester  Adolphus  whose  close-reasoned  '  Letters 
to  Richard  Heber'  had  practically  penetrated  the 
mystery  of   the  *  Waverley  Novels')   specially 


190        Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

noticed  the  picture  ;  and  he  also  afterwards 
recalled  and  repeated  a  characteristic  comment 
made  upon  it  by  Scott,  with  whom  it  was  evi- 
dently a  favourite,  in  one  of  those  brief  dia- 
logues which  generally  took  place  when  it 
became  necessary  to  consult  a  book  upon  the 
shelves.  Were  the  procession  to  move,  re- 
marked Sir  Walter,  the  prancing  young  'Squire 
in  the  foreground  would  be  over  his  horse's 
head  in  a  minute.  The  criticism  was  more 
of  the  riding-school  than  the  studio  ;  and  too 
much  might  easily  be  inferred  from  it  as  to  the 
speaker's  equipments  as  an  Art-critic.  For 
Art  itself,  we  are  told,  notwithstanding  his 
genuine  love  of  landscape  and  natural  objects, 
Scott  cared  nothing ;  and  Abbotsford  was  rich 
rather  in  works  suggestive  and  commemorative, 
than  in  masterpieces  of  composition  and  colour. 
'  He  talked  of  scenery  as  he  wrote  of  it,'  says 
Leslie  in  his  'Recollections,'  'like  a  painter; 
and  yet  for  pictures,  as  works  of  art,  he  had  little 
or  no  taste,  nor  did  he  pretend  to  any.  To  him 
they  were  interesting  merely  as  representing 
some  particular  scene,  person,  or  event,  and 
very  moderate  merit  in  their  execution  con- 
tented him.'  Stothard's  cavalcade,  progressing 
along  the  pleasantly  undulated  background  of 
he  Surrey  Hills,  with  its  drunken  Miller  dron- 


The  Quaker  of  Art.  191 

ing  on  his  bagpipes  at  the  head,  with  its  bibu- 
lous Cook  at  the  tail,  and  between  these,  all 
that  moving,  many-coloured  pageant  of  Middle- 
Age  society  upon  which  Geoffrey  Chaucer 
looked  five  hundred  years  ago,  must  have  been 
thoroughly  to  his  liking,  besides  reaching  a 
higher  artistic  standard  than  he  required.  To 
one  whose  feeling  for  the  past  has  never  yet 
been  rivalled,  such  a  picture  would  serve  as  a 
perpetual  fount  of  memory  and  association. 
He  must  besides  have  thoroughly  appreciated 
its  admitted  accuracy  of  costume,  and  it  would 
not  have  materially  affected  his  enjoyment  if 
the  Dick  Tintos  or  Dick  Minims  of  his  day 
had  assured  him  that,  as  a  composition,  it  was 
deficient  in  '  heroic  grasp,'  or  had  reiterated 
the  stereotyped  objection  that  the  Wife  of  Bath 
was  far  too  young-looking  to  have  buried  five 
lawful  husbands. 

The  original  oil-sketch  from  which  the  '  Can- 
terbury Pilgrims  '  was  engraved,  is  now  in  the 
National  Gallery,  having  been  bought  some 
years  ago,  with  Hogarth's  *  Polly  Peachum,' 
at  the  dispersal  of  the  Leigh  Court  Collection. 
It  is  not,  however,  by  his  more  ambitious  efforts 
that  Stothard  is  most  regarded  in  our  day.  Now 
and  then,  it  maybe,  the  Abbotsford  engraving,  or 
•The  Flitch  of  Bacon,'  or  'John  Gilpin,'  makes 


192       Eighteenth  Century  Fignettes. 

fitful  apparition  in  the  print-shop  windows  ; 
now  and  then  again,  in  some  culbute  giniraU 
of  the  bric-d-brac  merchant,  there  comes 
forlornly  to  the  front  a  card-table  contrived 
adroitly  from  the  once  famous  Waterloo  Shield. 
But  it  is  not  by  these,  or  by  the  huge  designs 
on  the  staircase  at  Burleigh  ('  Burleigh-house 
by  Stamford-town'),  or  by  any  of  the  efforts 
which  his  pious  biographer  and  daughter-in-law 
fondly  ranked  with  Raphael  and  Rubens,  that 
he  best  deserves  remembrance.  Time,  deal- 
ing summarily  with  an  unmanageable  inheri- 
tance, has  a  trick  of  making  rough  and  ready 
distinctions ;  and  Time  has  decided,  not  that 
he  did  these  things  ill,  but  that  he  did  other 
things  better — for  instance,  book  illustrations. 
And  the  modern  collector  is  on  the  side  of 
Time.  Stothard  as  a  colourist  (and  here  per- 
haps is  some  injustice)  he  disregards  :  Stothard 
as  a  history-painter  he  disavows.  But  for  Stot- 
hard as  the  pictorial  interpreter  of  *  David 
Simple  '  and  *  Betsy  Thoughtless,'  of  '  The 
Virtuous  Orphan'  and  the  '  Tales  of  the  Genii,' 
of  'Clarissa'  and  'Sir  Charles  Grandison,'  or 
(to  cite  another  admirer,  Charles  Lamb)  of  that 
'  romantic  tale  ' 

'  Where  Gluras  and  Gawries  wear  mysterious  things. 
That  serve  at  once  for  jackets  and  for  wings,*  — 


The  Quaker  of  Art.  193 

to  wit,  '  The  Life  and  Adventures  of  Peter 
Wilkins,'^  he  cares  very  much  indeed.  He  is 
not  surprised  that  they  gained  their  designer 
the  friendship  of  Flaxman  ;  and  if  he  is  not 
able  to  say  with  Elia,  — 

'  In  several  ways  distinct  you  make  us  feel,  — 
Graceful  as  Raphael,  as  Watteau  genteel,'  — 

epithets  which,  in  our  modern  acceptation  of 
them,  sound  singularly  ill-chosen,  he  can  at 
least  admit  that  if  his  favourite  is  occasion- 
ally a  little  monotonous  and  sometimes  a  little 
insipid,  there  are  few  artists  in  England  in  whose 
performances  the  un-English  gift  of  grace  is  so 
unmistakably  present. 

Fifty  years  ago  there  were  but  few  specimens 
of  Stothard's  works  in  the  Print  Room  of  the 
British  Museum,  and  even  those  were  not  ar- 
ranged so  as  to  be  easily  accessible.  To-day, 
this  complaint,  which  Pye  makes  in  that  mis- 
cellany of  unexpected  information,  his  '  Patron- 
age of  British  Art,'  can  no  longer  be  renewed. 
In  the  huge  Balmanno  collection,  a  labour  of 
five-and-twenty  years,  the  student  may  now 
study  his  Stothard  to  his  heart's  content.     Here 

1  Coleridge  is  also  extravagant  on  this  theme  in  his 
'Table  Talk.'     '  If  it  were  not  for  a  certain  tendency  to 
affectation,  scarcely  any  praise  could  be  too  high,'  he  says, 
♦for  Stothard's  designs  [to  Peter  Wilkins].' 
13 


194        Eighteenth  Century  Fignettes. 

is  brought  together  his  work  of  all  sorts,  his 
earliest  and  latest,  his  strongest  and  his  feeblest, 
from  the  first  tentative  essays  he  made  for 
the  'Lady's  Magazine'  and  Hervey's  'Naval 
History'  to  those  final  designs,  which,  aided 
by  the  supreme  imagination  of  Turner,  did  so 
much  to  vitalise  the  finicking  and  overlaboured 
blank  verse  of  his  faithful  but  fastidious  patron 
at  St.  James's  Place. 

'  Of  Rogers's  "  Italy,"  Luttrell  relates, 
It  would  surely  be  dished,  if  't  were  not  for  the  plates, 

said  the  wicked  wits  of  i8jo  ;  and  the  sarcasm 
has  its  parallel  in  the  '  Ce  poete  se  sauve  du 
naufrage  de  planche  en  planche/  which  the 
Abb6  Galiani  applied  to  Dorat  embellished  by 
Marillier  and  Eisen.  But  Stothard  did  many 
things  besides  illustrating  Samuel  Rogers.  Al- 
manack heads  and  spelling-books,  spoon-handles 
and  decanter  labels,  —  nothing  came  amiss  to  his 
patient  industry.  And  in  his  book  illustrations 
he  had  one  incalculable  advantage,  —  he  lived 
in  the  silver  age  of  line  engraving,  the  age  of  the 
Cooks  and  Warrens  and  Heaths  and  Findens. 

Shakespeare  and  Bunyan,  Macpherson  and 
Defoe,  Boccaccio  and  Addison,  —  most  of  the 
older  classics  passed  under  his  hand.  It  is 
the  fashion  in  booksellers'  catalogues  to  vaunt 


The  Quaker  of  Art.  195 

the  elaborate  volumes  he  did  in  later  life  for  the 
banker  poet.  But  it  is  not  in  these,  nor  his 
more  ambitious  efforts,  that  the  true  lover  -of 
Stothard  finds  his  greatest  charm.  He  is  the 
draughtsman  of  fancy  rather  than  imagination  ; 
and  he  is  moreover  better  in  the  mellow  copper 
of  his  early  days  than  the  '  cold  steel '  of  his  de- 
cline. If  you  would  view  your  Stothard  aright, 
you  must  take  him  as  the  illustrator  of  the 
eighteenth-century  novelists,  of  Richardson,  of 
Fielding,  of  Sterne,  of  Goldsmith,  where  the 
costume  in  which  he  delighted  was  not  too 
far  removed  from  his  own  day,  and  where  the 
literary  note  was  but  seldom  pitched  among  the 
more  tumultuous  passions.  In  this  semi-domes- 
tic atmosphere  he  moves  always  easily  and 
gracefully.  His  conversations  and  interviews, 
his  promenade  and  garden  and  tea-table  scenes, 
his  child-life  with  its  pretty  waywardnesses,  his 
ladies  full  of  sensibility  and  in  charming  caps, 
his  men  respectful  and  gallant  in  their  ruffles 
and  silk  stockings,  —  in  all  these  things  he  is  at 
home.  The  bulk  of  his  best  work  in  this  way  is 
in  Harrison's  Magazine,  and  in  the  old  double- 
column  edition  of  the  essayists,  where  it  is  set 
off  for  the  most  part  by  the  quaint  and  pretty 
framework  which  was  then  regarded  as  an  in- 
dispensable decoration  to  plates   engraved  for 


196        Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

books.  If  there  be  anything  else  of  his  which 
the  eclectic  (not  indiscriminate)  collector  should 
secure,  it  is  two  of  the  minor  Rogers  volumes 
for  which  the  booksellers  care  little.  One  is 
the  '  Pleasures  of  Memory'  of  1802,  if  only  for 
Heath's  excellent  engraving  of  '  Hunt  the  Slip- 
per ; '  the  other  is  the  same  poems  of  1810  with 
Luke  Clennell's  admirable  renderings  of  the 
artist's  quill-drawings,  —  renderings  to  rival 
which,  as  almost  faultless  reproductions  of 
pen-and-ink,  we  must  go  right  back  to  Hans 
Lutzelburger,  and  Holbein's  famous  '  Dance  of 
Death.' 

There  is  usually  one  thing  to  be  found  in 
Stothard's  designs  which  many  of  his  latter-day 
successors,  who  seem  to  care  for  little  except 
making  an  effective  *  compo,'  are  often  in  the 
habit  of  neglecting.  He  is  generally  fairly 
loyal  to  his  text,  and  honestly  endeavours  to 
interpret  it  pictorially.  Take,  for  example,  a 
sketch  at  random,  —  the  episode  of  the  acci- 
dent to  Count  Galiano's  baboon  in  Sharpe's 
'  Gil  Bias.'  You  need  scarcely  look  at  Le  Sage  ; 
the  little  picture  gives  the  entire  story.  There, 
upon  the  side  of  the  couch,  is  the  Count  in  an 
undress,  — effeminate,  trembling,  almost  tearful. 
Beside  him  is  his  wounded  favourite,  turning 
plaintively   to    its    agitated   master,   while   the 


The  Quaker  of  Art.  197 

hastily-summoned  surgeon,  his  under  lip  pro- 
truded professionally,  binds  up  the  injured  limb. 
Around  are  the  servants  in  various  attitudes  of 
sycophantic  sympathy.  Or  take  from  a  mere 
annual,  the  'Forget-me-not'  of  1828,  this 
little  ^enre  picture  out  of  Sterne.  Our  old 
friend  Corporal  Trim  is  moralising  in  the 
kitchen  to  the  hushed  Shandy  servants  on 
Master  Bobby's  death.  He  has  let  fall  his 
hat  upon  the  ground,  '  as  if  a  heavy  lump  of 
clay  had  been  kneaded  into  the  crown  of  it.' 
'  Are  we  not  here  now,'  says  Trim,  '  and  are 
we  not  gone  !  in  a  moment.'  Holding  her 
apron  to  her  eyes,  the  sympathetic  Susannah 
leans  her  hand  confidingly  upon  Trim's  shoulder; 
Jonathan,  the  coachman,  with  a  mug  of  ale  on 
his  knee,  stares  with  dropped  lip  at  the  hat,  as 
if  he  expected  it  to  do  something ;  Obadiah 
wonders  at  Trim  ;  the  cook  pauses  as  she  lifts 
the  lid  of  a  cauldron  at  the  fire,  and  the  *  foolish 
fat  scullion'  —  the  'foolish  fat  scullion'  who 
'  had  been  all  autumn  struggling  with  a  dropsy  ' 
and  is  still  immortal  —  looks  up  enquiringly 
from  the  fish-kettle  she  is  scouring  on  her 
knees.  It  is  all  there ;  and  Stothard  has  told 
us  all  of  it  that  pencil  could  tell. 

In  the  vestibule  at  Trafalgar  Square  is  a  bust 
of  Stothard  by  Weekes,  which  gives  an  excellent 


198        Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

idea  of  the  dignified  yet  deferential  old  gentle- 
rhan,  who  said  'Sir'  in  speaking  to  you,  like 
Dr.  Johnson,  and  whose  latter  days  were  passed 
as  Librarian  of  the  Royal  Academy.  Another 
characteristic  likeness  is  the  portrait,  now  in 
the  National  Portrait  Gallery,  which  was  en- 
graved by  Scriven  in  1833  for  Arnold's  '  Library 
of  the  Arts,'  and  once  belonged  to  Samuel 
Rogers.  The  story  of  Stothard's  life  has  little 
memorable  but  the  work  that  filled  and  satis- 
fied it.  Placid,  placable,  unpretentious,  mod- 
estly unsolicitous  of  advancement,  labouring 
assiduously  but  cheerfully  for  miserable  wage, 
he  seems  to  have  existed  at  equipoise,  neither 
exalted  nor  depressed  by  the  extremes  of  either 
fortune.  He  was  an  affectionate  father  and  a 
tender  husband ;  and  yet  so  even-pulsed  that 
on  his  wedding-day  he  went  as  usual  to  the 
drawing-school ;  and  he  bore  more  than  one 
heart-rending  bereavement  with  uncomplaining 
patience.  For  nearly  forty  years  he  lived  con- 
tentedly in  one  house  (28  Newman  Street)  with 
little  change  beyond  an  occasional  country  ex- 
cursion when  he  would  study  butterflies  for  his 
fairies'  wings,  or  a  long  walk  in  the  London 
streets  and  suburbs,  when  he  would  note  at 
every  turn  some  new  gesture  or  some  fresh 
group  for  his  ever-growing    storehouse  of  im- 


The  Quaker  of  Art.  199 

agination.  It  is  to  this  habit  of  observation  that 
we  owe  the  extraordinary  variety  and  fecun- 
dity of  his  compositions  ;  to  the  manner  of  it 
also  must  be  traced  their  occasional  executive 
defects.  That  no  two  men  will  draw  from  the 
living  model  in  exactly  the  same  way,  is  a 
truism.  But  the  artist,  who,  neglecting  the 
model  almost  wholly,  draws  by  preference  from 
his  note-book,  is  like  a  man  who  tells  a  story 
heard  in  the  past  of  which  he  has  retained  the 
spirit  rather  than  the  details.  He  will  give  it 
the  cachet  of  his  personal  qualities ;  he  will 
reproduce  it  with  unfettered  ease  and  freedom  ; 
but  those  who  afterwards  compare  it  with  the 
original  will  find  to  their  surprise  that  the  origi- 
nal was  not  exactly  what  they  had  been  led  to 
expect.  In  a  case  like  the  present  where  the 
artist's  mind  is  so  uniformly  pure  and  innocent, 
so  constitutionally  gentle  and  refined,  the  gain 
of  individuality  is  far  greater  than  the  loss  of 
finish  and  academic  accuracy.  If  to  Stothard's 
grace  and  delicacy  we  add  a  certain  primness 
of  conception,  a  certain  prudery  of  line,  it  is 
difficult  not  to  recognise  the  fitness  of  that 
happy  title  which  was  bestowed  upon  him  by 
the  late  James  Smetham.  He  is  the  '  Quaker 
of  Art.' 


BEWICK'S  TAILPIECES. 

"DETWEEN  the  years  1767  and  1785,  travel- 
■'^  lers  going  southward  to  Newcastle  along 
the  right  bank  of  the  Tyne  must  frequently  have 
encountered  a  springy,  well-set  lad  walking,  or 
oftener  running,  rapidly  in  the  opposite  direc- 
tion. During  the  whole  of  that  period,  which 
begins  with  Thomas  Bewick's  apprenticeship 
and  closes  with  the  deaths  of  his  father  and 
mother,  he  never  ceased  to  visit  regularly  the 
little  farm  at  Cherryburn  where  he  was  born. 

*  Dank  and  foul,  dank  and  foul, 
By  the  smoky  town  in  its  murky  cowl,' 

is  the  Tyne  at  Newcastle,  where  he  lived  his 
working  life  ;  but  at  Ovingham,  where  he  lies 
buried,  and  whence  you  can  see  the  remains  of 
his  birthplace,  it  still  flows 

'clear  and  cool, 
By  laughing  shallow,  and  dreaming  pool,* 

like  the  river  in  the  *  Water-Babies,'  and  one 
can  easily  conceive  with  what  an  eagerness  the 
country-bred   engraver's-apprentice    must  have 


Bewick's  Tailpieces.  201 

turned,  in  those  weekly  escapes  from  the  great, 
gloomy  manufacturing  city,  to  the  familiar  sights 
and  sounds  of  nature  which  had  filled  his  boy- 
hood with  delight.  To  his  love  for  these  things 
we  are  indebted  for  his  best  work ;  it  was  his 
intimate  acquaintance  with  them  that  has  kept 
his  memory  green  ;  and,  even  when  he  was  an 
old  man,  they  prompted  some  of  the  most  effec- 
tive passages  of  those  remarkable  recollections 
which,  despite  their  longueurs  et  langueurs, 
present  so  graphic  a  picture  of  his  early  life. 
'  I  liked  my  master,'  he  says ;  '  I  liked  the  busi- 
ness ;  but  to  part  from  the  country,  and  to  leave 
all  its  beauties  behind  me,  with  which  I  had 
been  all  my  life  charmed  in  an  extreme  degree, 
—  and  in  a  way  I  cannot  describe,  —  I  can 
only  say  my  heart  was  like  to  break.'  And 
then  he  goes  on  to  show  how  vivid  still,  at  a 
distance  of  sixty  years,  was  that  first  scene  of 
separation.  *  As  we  passed  away,  I  inwardly 
bade  farewell  to  the  whinny  wilds,  to  Mickley 
bank,  to  the  Stob-cross  hill,  to  the  water-banks, 
the  woods,  and  to  particular  trees,  and  even  to 
the  large  hollow  old  elm,  which  had  lain  per- 
haps for  centuries  past,  on  the  haugh  near  the 
ford  we  were  about  to  pass,  and  which  had 
sheltered  the  salmon-fishers,  while  at  work 
there,  from  many  a  bitter  blast.' 


Z02        Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

As  an  artist  on  wood,  as  the  reviver  of  the 
then  disused  art  of  Xylography  —  a  subject 
hedged  round  with  many  delicate  and  hair- 
splitting controversies  —  it  is  not  now  necessary 
to  speak  of  Bewick.  Nor  need  anything  be 
said  here  of  his  extraordinary  skill  —  a  skill 
still  unrivalled  —  in  delineating  those  'beau- 
tiful and  interesting  aerial  wanderers  of  the 
British  Isles,'  as  he  styles  them  in  his  old- 
fashioned  language,  the  birds  of  his  native 
country.  In  both  of  these  respects,  although 
he  must  always  be  accomplished,  he  may  one  day 
be  surpassed.  But  as  regards  his  vignettes  or 
tailpieces  ('  talepieces  '  they  might  be  called, 
since  they  always  tell  their  story),  it  is  not 
likely  that  a  second  Bewick  will  arise.  They 
were  imitated  in  his  own  day ;  they  are  imitated 
still — only  to  prove  once  more  how  rare  and 
exceptional  is  the  peculiarly  individual  combina- 
tion that  produced  them.  Some  of  his  own 
pupils,  Luke  Clennell,  for  instance,  working 
under  his  eye  and  in  his  atmosphere,  have  occa- 
sionally trodden  hard  upon  his  heels  in  land- 
scape ;  others,  as  Robert  Johnson,  have  caught 
at  times  a  reflex  of  his  distinctive  humour;  but, 
as  a  rule,  a  Bewick  tailpiece  of  the  best  period 
is  a  thing  per  se,  unapproachable,  inimitable, 
unique  ;  and  they  have  contributed  far  more  — 


Bewick's  Tailpieces.  203 

these   labours   of  his  playtime  —  to   found  his 
reputation  than  might  be  supposed.     If  you  ask 
a  true  Bewickian  about  Bewick,  he  will  begin 
by  dilating  upon  the  markings  of  the  Bittern, 
the  exquisite  downy  plumage  of  the  Short-eared 
Owl,  the  lustrous  spring  coat  of  the  Starling, 
the  relative  and  competitive  excellences  of  the 
Woodcock  and  the  White  Grouse ;  but  sooner 
or  later  he  will  wander  off  unconsciously  to  the 
close-packed  pathos  of  the  microscopic  vignette 
where  the  cruel  cur  is  tearing  at  the  worried 
ewe,  whose  poor  little  knock-kneed  lamb  looks 
on  in  trembling  terror ;  or  to  the  patient,  mel- 
ancholy shapes  of  the  black  and  white  horses 
seen  vaguely  through  the  pouring  rain  in  the 
tailpiece  to  the  Missel  Thrush  ;  or  to  the  ex- 
cellent jest  of  the  cat  stealing  the  hypocrite's 
supper  while  he  mumbles  his  long-winded  grace. 
He  will  tell  you  how  Charles   Kingsley,   the 
brave  and  manly,  loved  these  things  ;  how  they 
fascinated  the  callow  imagination  of  Charlotte 
Bronte  in  her  dreary  moorland  parsonage  ;  how 
they  stirred  the  delicate  insight  of  the  gentle, 
pure-souled    Leslie  ;   and  how   Ruskin   (albeit 
nothing  if  not  critical)  has  lavished  upon  them 
some  of  the  most  royal  of  his  epithets.^ 

1  Mr.  Ruskin,  it  may  be  hinted,  expounding  the  tail- 
pieces solely  by  the  light  of  his  intuitive  faculty,  has 


204        Eightemth  Century  yigneites. 

'  No  Greek  work  is  grander  than  the  angry 
dog,'  he  says,  referring  to  a  little  picture  of  which 
an  early  proof,  on  the  old  rag-paper  held  by  col- 
lectors to  be  the  only  fitting  background  for  a 
Bewick,  now  lies  before  us.  A  tramp,  with  his 
wallet  or  poke  at  his  side,  his  tattered  trousers 
corded  at  the  knees,  and  his  head  bound  with  a 
handkerchief  under  his  shapeless  hat,  has  sham- 
bled, in  his  furtive,  sidelong  fashion,  through 
the  open  gates  of  a  park,  only  to  find  himself 
confronted  by  a  watchful  and  resolute  mastiff. 
He  lifts  his  stick,  carved  rudely  with  a  bird's 
head,  the  minute  eye  and  beak  of  which  are 
perfectly  clear  through  a  magnifying-glass,  and 
holds  it  mechanically  with  both  hands  across  his 
body,  just  as  tramps  have  done  immemorially 
since  the  days  of  the  Dutchman  Jacob  Cats,  in 
whose  famous  'Emblems'  there  is  an  almost 
similar  scene.  The  dog,  which  you  may  en- 
tirely cover  with  a  shilling,  is  magnificent. 
There  is  not  a  line  in  its  body  which  does  not 
tell.  The  brindling  of  the  back,  the  white  mark- 
ing of  the  neck  and  chest  —  to  say  nothing  of 
the  absolute  moral  superiority  of  the  canine 
guardian  to  the  cowering  interloper — are  all 
conveyed  with  the  strictest  economy  of  stroke. 

sometimes  neglected  the  well-established  traditional  in- 
terpretations of  Bewick's  work. 


Bewick's  Tailpieces.  205 

Another  tailpiece,  to  which  Ruskin  gives  the 
adjective  '  superb,'  shows  a  man  crossing  a  river, 
probably  the  Tyne.  The  ice  has  thawed  into 
dark  pools  on  either  side,  and  snow  has  fallen 
on  what  remains.  He  has  strapped  his  bundle 
and  stick  at  his  back,  and,  with  the  foresight 
taught  of  necessity  in  those  bridgeless  days,  is 
astride  upon  a  long  bough,  so  that  if  by  any 
chance  the  ice  gives  way,  or  he  plumps  into 
some  hidden  fissure,  he  may  still  have  hope  of 
safety.  From  the  bows  of  the  moored  ferry- 
boat in  the  background  his  dog  anxiously 
watches  his  progress.  When  its  master  is  safe 
across,  it  will  come  bounding  in  his  tracks. 
The  desolate  stillness  of  the  spot,  the  bleak,  in- 
hospitable look  of  the  snow-clad  landscape,  are 
admirably  given.  But  Bewick  is  capable  of 
even  higher  things  than  these.  He  is  capable 
of  suggesting,  in  these  miniature  compositions, 
moments  of  the  keenest  excitement,  as,  for  ex- 
ample, in  the  tailpiece  to  the  Baboon  in  the 
volume  of  '  Quadrupeds.'  A  vicious-looking 
colt  is  feeding  in  a  meadow ;  a  little  tottering 
child  of  two  or  three  plucks  at  its  long  tail. 
The  colt's  eye  is  turned  backward  ;  its  heel  is 
ominously  raised  ;  and  over  the  North  Country 
stile  in  the  background  a  frightened  relative 
comes  rushing.     The  strain  of  the  tiny  group  is 


2o6        Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

intense ;  but  as  the  little  boy  was  Bewick's 
brother,  who  grew  up  to  be  a  man,  we  know 
that  no  harm  was  done.  Strangely  enough,  the 
incident  depicted  is  not  without  a  hitherto  un- 
noticed parallel.  Once,  when  Hartley  Cole- 
ridge was  a  child,  he  came  home  with  the  mark 
of  a  horse  hoof  impressed  unmistakably  upon 
his  pinafore.  Being  questioned,  he  admitted 
that  he  had  been  pulling  hairs  out  of  a  horse's 
tail ;  and  his  father  could  only  conclude  that 
the  animal,  with  intentional  forbearance,  had 
gently  pushed  him  backward.^ 

In  describing  the  tailpiece  to  the  Baboon,  we 
omitted  to  mention  one  minor  detail,  significant 
alike  of  the  artist  and  his  mode  of  work.  The 
presence  of  a  strayed  child  in  a  field  of  flowers 
is  not,  perhaps,  a  matter  which  calls  urgently 
for  comment.  But  Bewick  leaves  nothing  un- 
explained. In  the  shadow  of  a  thicket  to  the 
left  of  the  spectator  is  the  negligent  nurse  who 
should  have  watched  over  her  charge,  but  who, 
at  this  precise  moment  of  time,  is  wholly  en- 

^  Hartley  Coleridge  grew  up  to  write  sympathetically, 
in  his  papers  entitled  '  Ignoramus  on  the  Fine  Arts,'  of 
these  very  tailpieces.  In  them,  he  says,  Bewick  is  '  a  poet 
—  the  silent  poet  of  the  waysides  and  hedges.  He  unites 
the  accuracy  and  shrewdness  of  Crabbe  with  the  homely 
pathos  of  Bloomfield.'  (Blackwood's  Magazine,  October, 
1831.) 


Bewick's  Tailpieces.  207 

grossed  by  the  attentions  of  an  admirer  whose 
arm  is  round  her  waist.  Nor  is  it  in  those  ac- 
cessories alone  which  aid  the  story  that  Bewick 
is  so  careful.  His  local  colouring  is  scrupu- 
lously faithful  to  nature,  and,  although  not  al- 
ways an  actual  transcript  of  it,  is  invariably 
marked  by  that  accuracy  of  invention  which, 
as  some  one  said  of  Defoe,  '  lies  like  truth.' 
Nothing  in  his  designs  is  meaningless.  If  he 
draws  a  tree,  its  kind  is  always  distinguishable ; 
he  tells  you  the  nature  of  the  soil,  the  time  of 
year,  often  the  direction  of  the  wind.  Refer- 
ring to  the  *  little,  exquisitely  finished  inch-and- 
a-half  vignette '  of  the  suicide  in  the  '  Birds,' 
Henry  Kingsley  (of  whom,  equally  with  his 
brother  Charles,  it  may  be  said,  in  the  phrase 
of  the  latter,  //  sail  son  Bewick)  notes  that  the 
miserable  creature  has  hanged  himself  '  in  the 
month  of  June,  on  an  oak  bough,  stretching 
over  a  shallow  trout  stream,  which  runs  through 
carboniferous  limestone.'  Sero  sed  serio  is  the 
motto  which  Bewick  has  written  under  the 
dilapidated,  desperate  figure,  whose  dog,  even 
as  the  dog  of  Sikes  in  '  Oliver  Twist,'  is  run- 
ning nervously  backwards  and  forwards  in  its  ef- 
forts to  reach  its  pendent,  motionless,  strangely 
silent  master.  These  legends  and  inscriptions, 
characteristic  of  the  artist,  are  often  most  hap- 


2o8        Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

pily  effective.  Generally,  like  the  Justissima 
Tellus  of  the  vignette  of  the  ploughman,  or  the 
Grata  same  of  the  spring  at  which  Bewick  him- 
self, on  his  Scotch  tour,  is  drinking  from  the 
'  flipe  '  of  his  hat,  they  simply  add  to  the  restful 
or  rural  beauty  of  the  scene ;  but  sometimes 
they  supply  the  needful  key  to  the  story.  In 
the  tailpiece  to  the  Woodchat,  for  example,  a 
man  lies  senseless  on  the  ground.  His  eyes  are 
closed,  and  his  hat  and  wig  have  fallen  back- 
ward. Is  he  dead,  or  in  a  fit,  or  simply  drunk  ? 
He  is  drunk.  On  a  stone  hard  by  is  the  date 
*4  June,  1795,'  and  he  has  obviously  been  toast- 
ing the  nativity  of  his  Majesty  George  the 
Third. 

But  clearness  of  message,  truth  to  nature, 
and  skill  in  compressed  suggestion  are  not 
Bewick's  sole  good  qualities.  He  does  not 
seem  to  have  known  much  of  Hogarth — per- 
haps the  Juvenalian  manner  of  that  great  graphic 
satirist  was  not  entirely  to  his  taste  —  but  he  is 
a  humorist  to  some  extent  in  Hogarth's  manner, 
and,  after  the  fashion  of  his  day,  he  is  a  moralist. 
He  delights  in  queer  dilemmas  and  odd  em- 
barrassments. Now  it  is  a  miserly  fellow  who 
fords  a  river  with  his  cow  to  save  the  bridge 
toll.  The  water  proves  deeper  than  he  ex- 
pected ;  the  cow,  to  whose  tail  he  is  clinging, 


Bewick's  Tailpieces.  209 

rather  enjoys  it  ;  her  master  does  not.  Now  it 
is  an  old  man  at  a  standstill  on  an  obstinate 
horse.  It  is  raining  heavily,  and  there  is  a  high 
wind.  He  has  lost  his  hat  and  broken  his  stick, 
but  he  is  afraid  to  get  down  because  he  has  a 
basket  of  excited  live  fowl  on  his  arm.  Occa- 
sionally the  humour  is  a  little  grim,  after  the  true 
North  Country  fashion.  Such  is  the  case  in 
the  tailpiece  to  the  Curlew  where  a  blacksmith 
(or  is  it  a  tanner  ? )  looks  on  pitiless  at  the  un- 
happy dog  with  a  kettle  dangling  at  its  tail ;  such, 
again,  in  the  vignette  of  the  mischievous  young- 
ster who  leads  the  blind  man  into  mid-stream. 
As  a  moralist,  Bewick  is  never  tired  of  exhibit- 
ing the  lachrimce  rerum,  the  brevity  of  life,  the 
emptiness  of  fame.  The  staved-in,  useless  boat ; 
the  ruined  and  deserted  cottage,  with  the  grass 
growing  at  the  hearthstone ;  the  ass  rubbing 
itself  against  the  pillar  that  celebrates  the  '  glo- 
rious victory;'  the  churchyard,  with  its  rising 
moon,  and  its  tombstone  legend,  *  Good 
Times,  bad  Times,  and  all  Times  got  over,'  are 
illustrations  of  this  side  of  his  genius.  But  the 
subject  is  one  which  could  not  be  exhausted  in 
many  papers,  for  this  little  gallery  is  Bewick's 
'  criticism  of  life,'  and  he  had  seventy-five  years' 
experience.  His  final  effort  was  a  ferryman 
waiting  to  carry  a  coffin  from  Eltringham  to 
14 


2IO        Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

Ovingham  ;  and  on  his  death-bed  he  was  medi- 
tating his  favourite  work.  In  a  lucid  moment 
of  his  last  wanderings  he  was  asked  of  what  he 
had  been  thinking,  and  he  replied,  with  a  faint 
smile,  that  he  had  been  devising  subjects  for 
some  new  Tailpieces. 


A  GERMAN    IN   ENGLAND. 

lirHEN,  in  1768,  the  yet  undistinguished 
'*  James  Boswell  of  Auchinleck  gave  to 
the  world  his  '  Journal  of  a  Tour  to  Corsica,' 
Gray  wrote  to  Horace  Walpole  from  Pembroke 
College  that  the  book  had  strangely  pleased  and 
moved  him.  Then,  with  the  curious  contempt 
for  the  author  which  that  egregious  personage 
seems  to  have  inspired  in  so  many  of  his  con- 
temporaries, Gray  goes  on  :  '  The  pamphlet 
proves  what  I  have  always  maintained,  that  any 
fool  may  write  a  most  valuable  book  by  chance, 
if  he  will  only  tell  us  what  he  heard  and  saw 
with  veracity.'  This  is  an  utterance  which 
suggests  that  sometimes  even  the  excellent 
critic  Mr.  Gray,  like  the  Sage  of  Gough  Square, 
'  talked  laxly.'  At  all  events  this  particular  exam- 
ple scarcely  illustrates  his  position.  There  was 
more  than  mere  veracity  in  Boswell's  method. 
Conscious  or  unconscious,  his  faculty  for  re- 
producing his  impressions  effectively,  and  his 
thoroughly  individual  treatment  of  his  material, 
are  far  more  nearly  akin  to  genius  than  folly. 


212        Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

Nor  could  his  success  be  said  to  be  a  matter 
of  chance,  since  on  two  subsequent  occasions 
—  in  the  'Tour  to  the  Hebrides'  and  the 
*  Life  of  Johnson'  —  he  not  only  repeated  that 
success,  but  carried  further  towards  perfection 
those  fortunate  characteristics  which  he  had 
exhibited  at  first.  Walpole,  if  we  may  trust 
the  title-page  of  the  '  little  lounging  miscellany  ' 
known  as  '  Walpoliana,'  reported  his  friend's 
dictum  with  greater  moderation.  '  Mr.  Gray  the 
poet  has  often  observed  to  me,  that,  if  any 
person  were  to  form  a  Book  of  what  he  had 
seen  and  heard  himself,  it  must,  in  whatever 
hands,  prove  a  most  useful  and  entertaining 
one.'  As  a  generalisation,  this  leaves  nothing 
to  be  desired.  That  the  unaffected  record  of 
ordinary  experiences,  '  honestly  set  down,'  is 
seldom  without  its  distinctive  charm,  needs  no 
demonstration ;  and  when  lapse  of  time  has 
added  its  grace  of  remoteness,  the  charm  is 
heightened.  These  considerations  must  serve 
as  our  excuse  for  recalling  a  half-forgotten 
'  pamphlet '  —  as  Gray  would  have  styled  it  — 
which  points  the  moral  of  his  amended  apho- 
rism far  better  than  Boswell's  '  Tour.' 

The  narrative  of  Charles  P.  Moritz's  '  Trav- 
els, chiefly  on  Foot,  through  several  Parts  of 
England,'  belongs  to   1782.     It  was  first  pub- 


A  German  in  England.  213 

lishcd  at  Berlin  in  1783,  and  the  earliest  English 
version  is  dated  1795.  The  second  edition 
(now  before  us)  came  two  years  later,  and 
other  issues  are  occasionally  met  with  in  book- 
sellers' catalogues ;  besides  which,  John  Pin- 
kerton,  the  compiler  of  the  '  Walpoliana '  above 
mentioned,  included  the  book  in  the  second 
volume  of  his  ^  Collections  of  Voyages,'  etc.,  and 
Mayor  also  reprinted  it  in  vol.  ix.  of  his  '  British 
Tourist."  ^  The  English  translator  was  a  *  very 
young  lady,'  said  to  be  the  daughter  of  an  un- 
identified personage  referred  to  by  the  author  : 
the  editor,  who,  in  a  copious  preface,  testifies, 
among  other  things,  to  the  favourable  recep- 
tion of  the  work  in  Berlin  and  Germany  gener- 
ally, remains  anonymous.  Moritz  himself,  the 
writer  of  the  volume,  was  a  young  Prussian 
clergyman,  enthusiastic  about  England  and 
things  English,  who  came  among  us  '  to  draw 
Miltonic  air'  (in  Gay's  phrase),  and  to  read 
his  beloved  '  Paradise  Lost '  in  the  very  land  of 
its  conception.  He  stayed  exactly  seven  weeks 
in  this  country,  three  of  which  he  spent  in 
London,  the  rest  being  occupied  by  visits  to 
Oxford,  Birmingham,  the  Peak,  and  elsewhere. 
What  he  sees,  and  what  he  admires  (and  luckily 

*  It  is  also  included,  with  some  omissions,  in  Cassell's 
excellent '  National  Library.' 


214        Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

for  us  he  admires  a  great  deal),  he  describes  in 
letters  to  one  Frederic  Gedike,  a  professorial 
friend  at  Berlin. 

His  first  communication,  dated  31st  May,  de- 
picts his  progress  up  the  Thames,  which  he  re- 
gards as  greatly  surpassing  even  '  the  charming 
banks  of  the  Elbe.''  Then  he  disembarks  near 
Dartford,  whence,  with  two  companions,  he 
posts  to  London,  behind  a  round-hatted  postilion 
'  with  a  nosegay  in  his  bosom.'  He  is  delighted 
with  the  first  view  he  gets  of  an  English  soldier, 
'  in  his  red  uniform,  his  hair  cut  short  and 
combed  back  on  his  forehead,  so  as  to  afford  a 
full  view  of  his  fine  broad  manly  face.'  He 
is  interested  also  to  see  two  boys  engaged  in 
the  national  pastime  of  boxing ;  and  he  mar- 
vels at  the  huge  gateway-like  sign-posts  of  the 
village  inns.  Passing  over  Westminster,  Bridge, 
he  does  not,  like  Wordsworth,  burst  into  a 
sonnet,  but  he  is  impressed  (as  who  would  not 
be  1)  by  that  unequalled  coup  cCceil.  *  The  pros- 
pect from  this  bridge  alone,'  he  says,  '  seems  to 
afford  one  the  epitome  of  a  journey,  or  a  voyage 
in  miniature,  as  containing  something  of  every- 
thing that  most  usually  occurs  on  a  journey.* 
Presently,  a  little  awed  by  the  prodigious  great- 
ness and  gloom  of  the  houses  (which  remind 
him  of  Leipzig),  he  takes  lodgings  in  George 


A  German  in  England.  215 

Street,  Strand,  with  a  tailor's  widow,  not  very 
far,  as  he  is  pleased  to  discover,  from  that 
Adelphi  Terrace  where  once  '  lived  the  re- 
nowned Garrick.''  To  his  simple  tastes  his 
apartments,  with  their  leather-covered  chairs, 
carpeted  floors  and  mahogany  tables,  have  an  air 
of  splendour.  '  I  may  do  just  as  I  please,'  he 
says,  '  and  keep  my  own  tea,  coffee,  bread  and 
butter,  for  which  purpose  [and  here  comes  a 
charming  touch  of  guilelessness !]  my  landlady 
has  given  me  a  cupboard  in  my  room,  which 
locks  up.'  With  one  of  his  landlady's  sons  for 
guide,  he  makes  the  tour  of  St.  James's  Park 
(where  you  may  buy  milk  warm  from  the  cow), 
and  he  experiences  for  the  first  time  '  the  ex- 
quisite pleasure  of  mixing  freely  with  a  con- 
course of  people,  who  are  for  the  most  part 
well  dressed  and  handsome.'  His  optimism 
finds  a  further  gratification  in  the  *  sweet  se- 
curity' (the  expression  is  not  his,  but  Lamb's) 
which  is  afforded  '  from  the  prodigious  crowd 
of  carts  and  coaches,'  by  the  footways  on  either 
side  of  the  streets ;  and  he  explains  to  his 
'dearest  Gedike '  the  mysteries  of  giving  the 
wall.  He  thinks  London  better  lighted  than 
Berlin  (which  implies  little  short  of  Cimmerian 
darkness  in  that  centre  of  civilisation  !),  and 
he  waxes  sorrowful  over  the  general  evidence  of 


2i6         Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes, 

dram-drinking  and  the  sale  of  spirituous  liquors. 
*  In  the  late  riots  [i.  e.  the  Gordon  Riots  of 
1780],  which  even  yet  are  hardly  quite  sub- 
sided, and  which  are  still  the  general  topic  of 
conversation,  more  people  have  been  found 
dead  near  empty  brandy-casks  in  the  streets, 
than  were  killed  by  the  musket-balls  of  regi- 
ments, that  were  called  in.'  Another  thing 
which  strikes  him  as  foreign  to  his  experience  is 
the  insensibility  of  the  crowd  to  funerals.  '  The 
people  seem  to  pay  as  little  attention  to  such  a 
procession,  as  if  a  hay-cart  were  driving  past.' 
Among  more  pleasurable  novelties,  are  the  Eng- 
lish custom  of  sleeping  without  an  eider-down, 
and  the  insular  institution  of  '  buttered  toast,' 
which,  incredible  as  it  may  sound,  appears  to 
have  been  still  an  unknown  luxury  in  the  land 
of  Werther.^ 

^  Another  of  his  remarks  is  of  special  interest  in  our 
day:  —  'That  same  influenza,  which  I  left  at  Berlin,  I 
have  had  the  hard  fortune  again  to  find  here ;  ««</  many 
people  die  of  W  (the  italics  are  ours).  Elsewhere  he 
says  that  the  Prussian  quack  Katterfelto,  —  Cowper's 

'  Katerfelto,  with  his  h^  on  end. 
At  his  own  wonders  wondering  for  his  bread,'  — 

whose  advertisements  were  then  in  every  paper,  at- 
tributed the  epidemic  to  a  minute  insect,  against  which, 
of  course,  he  professed  to  protect  his  patients.  Wal- 
pole's  correspondence  contains  references  to  the  same 


A  German  in  England.  2.1"] 

On  the  second  Sunday  after  his  arrival  he 
preaches  at  the  German  Church  on  Ludgate 
Hill  for  the  pastor,  the  Rev.  Mr.  Vv^endeborn, 
who  resides  '  in  a  philosophical,  but  not  un- 
improving  retirement'  at  chambers  in  New 
Inn,  —  and  he  visits  the  Prussian  Ambassador, 
Count  Lucy,  with  whom,  over  a  '  dish  of 
coffee'  he  has  a  learned  argument  upon  the 
pending  dispute  '  about  the  tacismus  or  sta- 
cismus.'  Then  he  pays  a  visit  to  Vauxhall 
Gardens.  Comparing  great  things  with  small, 
he  traces  certain  superficial  resemblances  be- 
tween the  Surrey  Paradise  and  the  similar 
resort  at  Berlin,  —  resemblances  which  are  en- 
forced by  his  speedy  discovery  of  that  chiefest 
glory  of  the  English  gardens,  Roubillac's  statue 
of  Handel.  The  Gothic  orchestra,  and  the 
painted  ruins  at  the  end  of  the  walks  (some- 
times used  by  flippant  playwrights  as  similes 
for  beauty  in  decay)  also  come  in  for  a  share 
of  his  admiration  ;  and  he  is  particularly  im- 
pressed by  Hayman's  pictures  in  the  Rotunda. 
'  You  here,'   he   adds,    speaking  of    this  last, 

visitation.  It  was,  he  writes,  'universal,'  but  not  '  danger- 
ous or  lasting.'  '  The  strangest  part  of  it,'  he  tells  Mann 
in  June,  '  is,  that,  though  of  very  short  duration,  it  has 
left  a  weakness  or  lassitude,  of  which  people  find  it  very 
difiScult  to  recover.' 


2i8        Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

'  find  the  busts  of  the  best  English  authors, 
placed  all  round  on  the  sides.  Thus  a  Briton 
again  meets  with  his  Shakespeare,  Locke,  Mil- 
ton, and  Dryden  in  the  public  places  of  his 
amusements ;  and  there  also  reveres  their 
memory.'  He  finds  further  confirmation  of 
this  honoured  position  of  letters  in  the  popu- 
larity of  the  native  classics  as  compared  with 
those  of  Germany,  '  which  in  general  are  read 
only  by  the  learned ;  or,  at  most,  by  the 
middle  class  of  people.  The  English  national 
authors  are  in  all  hands,  and  read  by  all  people, 
of  which  the  innumerable  editions  they  have 
gone  through,  are  a  sufficient  proof.'  In  Ger- 
many 'since  Gellert  [of  the  Fables],  there  has 
as  yet  been  no  poet's  name  familiar  to  the 
people.'  But  in  England  even  his  landlady 
studies  her  '  Paradise  Lost,'  and  indeed  by  her 
own  account  won  the  affections  of  her  husband 
(now  deceased)  '  because  she  read  Milton  with 
such  proper  emphasis.'  Another  institution  that 
delights  him  is  the  second-hand  bookseller,  at 
whose  movable  stall  you  may  buy  odd  volumes 
'  so  low  as  a  penny  ;  nay,  even  sometimes  for  an 
half-penny  a  piece.'  Of  one  of  these  *  itinerant 
antiquarians  '  he  buys  the  *  Vicar  of  Wakefield ' 
in  two  volumes  for  sixpence. 

After  Vauxhall  follows,  as  a  matter  of  course, 


A  German  in  England.  219 

a  visit  to  the  equally  popular  Ranelagh.  Like 
most  people,  the  traveller  had  expected  it  to 
resemble  its  rival,  and  until  he  actually  entered 
the  Great  Room,  was  grievously  disappointed. 
'  But,'  he  continues,  '  it  is  impossible  to  de- 
scribe, or  indeed  to  conceive,  the  effect  it  had 
on  me,  v^rhen,  coming  out  of  the  gloom  of  the 
garden,  I  suddenly  entered  a  round  building, 
illuminated  by  many  hundred  lamps,  the  splen- 
dour and  beauty  of  w^hich  surpassed  every  thing 
of  the  kind  I  had  ever  seen  before.  Every- 
thing seemed  here  to  be  round ;  above,  there 
was  a  gallery,  divided  into  boxes,  and  in  one 
part  of  it  an  organ  with  a  beautiful  choir,  from 
which  issued  both  instrumental  and  vocal  music. 
All  around,  under  this  gallery,  are  handsome 
painted  boxes  for  those  who  wish  to  take  re- 
freshments. The  floor  was  covered  with  mats  ; 
in  the  middle  of  which  are  four  high  black 
pillars,  within  which  are  neat  fire-places  for  pre- 
paring tea,  coffee,  and  punch  ;  and  all  around 
also  there  are  placed  tables,  set  out  with  all 
kinds  of  refreshments.  Within  [he  means 
'without']  these  four  pillars,  in  a  kind  of 
magic  rotundo,  all  the  beau-monde  of  London 
move  perpetually  round  and  round.'  This,  as 
may  be  seen  by  a  glance  at  Parr's  print  of  175 1 
after  Canaletto,  or  the   better-known  plate  in 


220        Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

Stowe's  'Survey'  of  1754,  is  a  fairly  faithful 
description  of  the  Ranelagh  of  Walpole  and 
Chesterfield.  After  a  modest  consommation, 
which,  to  his  astonishment,  he  finds  is  covered 
by  the  half-crown  he  paid  at  the  door,  he 
mounts  to  the  upper  regions.  '  I  now  went  up 
into  the  gallery,  and  seated  myself  in  one  of 
the  boxes  there  :  and  from  thence,  becoming, 
all  at  once,  a  grave  and  moralising  spectator,  I 
looked  down  on  the  concourse  of  people  who 
were  still  moving  round  and  round  in  the  fairy 
circle  ;  and  then  I  could  easily  distinguish  sev- 
eral stars,  and  other  orders  of  knighthood  ; 
French  queues  and  bags  contrasted  with  plain 
English  heads  of  hair,  or  professional  wigs ; 
old  age  and  youth,  nobility  and  commonalty, 
all  passing  each  other  in  the  motley  swarm. 
An  Englishman  who  joined  me,  during  this  my 
reverie,  pointed  out  to  me,  on  my  enquiring, 
princes,  and  lords  with  their  dazzling  stars ; 
with  which  they  eclipsed  the  less  brilliant  part 
of  the  company.' 

His  next  experiences  are  of  the  House  of 
Commons,  Here  he  had  like  to  have  been 
disappointed  from  his  unhappy  ignorance  of  an 
enlightened  native  formula.  Having  made  his 
way  to  Westminster  Hall,  a  '  very  genteel  man 
in  black '  informed  him  he  must  be  introduced 


A  German  in  England.  221 

by  a  member,  an  announcement  which  caused 
him  to  retire  *  much  chagrined.'  Something 
unintelligible  was  mumbled  behind  him  about 
a  bottle  of  wine,  but  it  fell  on  alien  ears.  As 
soon  as  he  returned  home,  his  intelligent  land- 
lady solved  the  difficulty,  sending  him  back  next 
day  with  the  needful  douceur,  upon  which  the 

*  genteel  man,*  with  much  venal  urbanity, 
handed  him  into  a  select  seat  in  the  Strangers' 
Gallery.  The  building  itself  strikes  him  as 
rather  mean,  and  not  a  little  resembling  a 
chapel.  But  the  Speaker  and  the  mace  ;  the 
members  going  and  coming,  some  cracking  nuts 
and  eating  oranges,  others  in  their  greatcoats 
and  with  boots  and  spurs  ;  the  cries  of  *  Hear,' 
and  '  Order,'  and  '  Question,'  speedily  absorb 
him.  On  his  first  visit  he  is  fortunate.  The 
debate  turns  on  the  reward  to  Admiral  Rodney 
for  his  victory  over  De  Grasse  at  Guadaloupe, 
and  he   hears    Fox,   Burke,   and  Rigby  speak. 

*  This  same  celebrated  Charles   Fox,'  he  says, 

*  is  a  short,  fat,  and  gross  man,  with  a  swarthy 
complexion,  and  dark ;  and  in  general  he  is 
badly  dressed.  There  certainly  is  something 
Jewish  in  his  looks.  But  upon  the  whole,  he 
is  not  an  ill-made  nor  an  ill-looking  man :  and 
there  are  many  strong  marks  of  sagacity  and 
fire   in  his  eyes.  .  .  .  Burke  is  a  well-made, 


222        Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

tall,  upright  man,  but  looks  elderly  and  broken. 
Rigby  is  excessively  corpulent,  and  has  a  jolly 
rubicund  face.' 

Pastor  Moritz  repeated  his  visits  to  the  Par- 
liament House,  frankly  confessing  that  he  pre- 
ferred this  entertainment  to  most  others ;  and, 
indeed,  it  was  a  shilling  cheaper  than  the  pit 
of  a  theatre.  When,  after  his  tour  in  the 
country,  he  came  back  to  London,  he  seems 
at  once  to  have  gravitated  to  Westminster,  for 
he  gives  an  account  of  the  discussion  on  the 
Barr6  pension  which  followed  the  death  of 
Lord  Rockingham  in  July.  He  heard  Fox, 
with  great  eloquence,  vindicate  his  resigna- 
tion ;  he  heard  Horace  Walpole's  friend. 
General  Conway ;  he  heard  Burke,  in  a  pas- 
sion, insisting  upon  the  respect  of  the  house ; 
he  heard  the  youthful  Pitt,  then  scarcely  look- 
ing more  than  one-and-lwenty,  rivet  univer- 
sal attention.  A  little  earlier  he  had  been 
privileged  to  witness  that  most  English  of  sights, 
the  Westminster  election  in  Covent  Garden, 
with  its  boisterous  ^na/g.  'When  the  whole 
was  over,  the  rampant  spirit  of  liberty,  and 
the  wild  impatience  of  a  genuine  English  mob, 
were  exhibited  in  perfection.  In  a  very  few 
minutes  the  whole    scaffolding,    benches,   and 


A  German  in  England.  223 

chairs,  and  everything  else,  was  completely 
destroyed  ;  and  the  mat  with  which  it  had  been 
covered  torn  into  ten  thousand  long  strips  or 
pieces,  or  strings ;  with  which  they  encircled 
or  enclosed  multitudes  of  people  of  all  ranks. 
These  they  hurried  along  with  them,  and  every- 
thing else  that  came  in  their  way,  as  trophies 
of  joy ;  and  thus,  in  the  midst  of  exultation 
and  triumph,  they  paraded  through  many  of  the 
most  populous  streets  of  London.' 

To  the  British  Museum  he  paid  a  flying  visit 
of  little  more  than  an  hour,  with  a  miscellane- 
ous and  '  personally  conducted'  party,  —  a  visit 
scarcely  favourable  to  minute  impressions.  But 
of  the  Haymarket  Theatre,  to  which  he  went 
twice  (Covent  Garden  and  Drury  Lane  being 
closed  as  usual  for  the  summer  months),  he  gives 
a  fairly  detailed  account.  Foote's  '  Nabob  ' 
was  the  play  on  the  first  night ;  that  on  the 
second,  the  '  English  Merchant,'  adapted  by  the 
elder  Colman  from  the  '  Ecossaise '  of  Voltaire. 
"With  this  latter  he  was  already  familiar  in  its 
German  dress,  having  seen  it  at  Hamburg.  On 
both  occasions  the  performance  wound  up  with 
O'Keeffe's  once-famous  ballad  farce  of  *  The 
Agreeable  Surprise.'  That  excellent  burletta 
singer,  John  Edwin,  took  the  part  of  '  Lingo ' 


224        Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

the  schoolmaster  (which  he  had  created),^  to 
the  entire  satisfaction  of  Moritz,  who  thought 
him,  with  his  '  Amo,  amas,  I  love  a  lass,'  etc. 
and  his  musical  voice,  '  one  of  the  best  actors 
of  all  that  he  had  seen,'  notwithstanding  that 
Jack  Palmer  (Lamb  and  Goldsmith's  Palmer!) 
acted  the  Nabob.  But  if  he  was  pleased  with 
the  acting,  he  was  not  equally  impressed  by 
the  audience.  The  ceaseless  clamour  of  the 
upper  gallery  and  the  steady  hail  of  missiles 
were  anything  but  agreeable.  '  Often  and  often 
whilst  I  sat  here  [i.  e.  in  the  pit],  did  a  rotten 
orange,  or  pieces  of  the  peel  of  an  orange,  fly 
past  me,  or  past  some  of  my  neighbours,  and 
once  one  of  them  actually  hit  my  hat,  without 
my  daring  to  look  round,  for  fear  another  might 
then  hit  me  on  my  face.'  Another  passage 
connected  with  this  part  of  the  entertainment 
illustrates  the  old  fashion  of  sending  the  lackeys 
to  keep  their  masters'  places  :  '  In  the  boxes, 
quite  in  a  corner,  sat  several  servants,  who 
were  said  to  be  placed  there,  to  keep  the  seats 
for  the  families  they  served,  till  they  should 
arrive  ;  they  seemed  to  sit  remarkably  close  and 

1  There  is  a  print  of  Edwin  in  this  character  after  a  pic- 
ture by  Alefounder.  He  was  also  a  favourite  '  Croaker ' 
in  the  '  Good  Natur'd  Man.' 


A  German  in  England.  225 

still,  the  reason  of  which,  I  was  told,  was  their 
apprehension  of  being  pelted,  for,  if  one  of 
them  dares  but  to  look  out  of  the  box,  he  is 
immediately  saluted  with  a  shower  of  orange 
peel  from  the  gallery.' 

Over  the  descriptions  of  St.  Paul's  and  West- 
minster Abbey  we  must  pass  silently,  in  order 
to  accompany  the  tourist  on  his  road  to  Derby- 
shire, to  the  '  natural  curiosities '  of  which, 
after  some  hesitation,  he  felt  himself  most  at- 
tracted. Equipped  v/ith  a  road-book,  he  set 
out  by  stage-coach  from  the  White  Hart  (in 
the  Strand)  for  Richmond,  intending  thence  to 
pursue  his  journey  on  foot.  According  to  hi; 
own  account,  he  must  have'  travelled  in  just 
such  another  vehicle  as  that  depicted  in 
Hogarth's  '  Country  Inn-Yard,'  and  have 
shared  the  curiosity,  so  often  felt  by  admirers 
of  that  veracious  picture,  and  afterwards  amply 
gratified  in  his  own  case,  as  to  the  method  by 
which  passengers  managed  to  *  fasten  them- 
selves securely  on  the  roof.'  Luckily  the  coach 
met  neither  highwayman  nor  footpad.  At  Rich- 
mond he  alighted,  and  is  properly  enthusiastic, 
almost  dithyrambic,  over  '  one  of  the  first 
situations  in  the  world.'  He  even  got  up  to 
see  the  sun  rise  from  Richmond  Hill,  with  the 
usual  fate  of  such  premature  adventurers,  a 
IS 


226        Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes, 

clouded  sky.  Then  he  set  out  on  foot  by 
Windsor  to  Oxford.  But  he  speedily  discov- 
ered that,  in  a  horse-riding  age,  a  pedestrian 
was  a  person  of  very  inferior  respectability  ; 
and  though  —  modelling  himself  upon  the  Vicar 
of  Wakefield  — he  was  careful  to  invite  the  land- 
lords to  drink  with  him,  he  found  himself  gen- 
erally treated  with  pity  or  contempt,  which, 
when  he  sat  down  under  a  hedge  to  read  Mil- 
ton, almost  changed  into  a  doubt  of  his  sanity. 
At  most  of  the  inns  they  declined  to  give  him 
house-room,  though,  finally,  he  was  allowed  to 
enter  '  one  of  those  kitchens  which  I  had  so 
often  read  of  in  Fielding's  fine  novels,'  where, 
just  as  in  those  novels,  presently  arrives  a  showy 
post-chaise  to  set  the  servile  establishment  in  a 
bustle,  although  the  occupants  called  for  noth- 
ing but  two  pots  of  beer.  After  a  vain  attempt 
to  obtain  a  night's  lodging  at  Nuneham,  he 
picks  up  a  travelling  companion  in  the  shape  of 
a  young  clergyman,  who  had  been  preaching 
at  Dorchester  and  was  returning  to  Oxford. 
His  new  ally  takes  him  to  the  time-honoured 
Mitre,  where  he  finds  '  a  great  number  of 
clergymen,  all  with  their  gowns  and  bands  on, 
sitting  round  a  large  table,  each  with  his  pot  of 
beer  before  him.'  A  not  very  edifying  the- 
ological discussion  ensues,  which  is  too  long  to 


A  German  in  England.  227 

quote,  and  poor  Parson  Moritz  is  so  well  enter- 
tained that  he  has  a  splitting  headache  next 
morning.  His  further  fortunes  cannot  be  de- 
tailed here.  From  Oxford  he  goes  to  Stratford- 
on-Avon,  then  to  Lichfield  and  Derby,  and  so 
to  his  destination,  '  the  great  Cavern  near 
Castleton,  in  the  high  Peake  of  Derbyshire,' 
which  he  describes  at  length.  He  returns  by 
Nottingham  and  Leicester,  whence,  still  en- 
thusiastic, but  a  little  weary  of  his  repeated 
humiliations  on  foot,'  he  takes  coach  to  North- 
ampton, mounting  to  the  top,  in  company  with 
a  farmer,  a  young  man  and  '  a  black-a-moor.' 
This  eminence  proving  as  perilous  as  it  looked, 
he  creeps  into  the  basket,  in  spite  of  the  warn- 
ings of  the  black.  '  As  long  as  we  went  up 
hill,  it  was  easy  and  pleasant.  And,  having  had 
little  or  no  sleep  the  night  before,  I  was  almost 
asleep  among  the  trunks  and  the  packages  ; 
but  how  was  the  case  altered  when  we  came 
to  go  down  hill ;  then  all  the  trunks  and  parcels 
began,  as  it  were,  to  dance  around  me,  and 
everything  in  the  basket  seemed  to  be  alive  ; 
and  I  every  moment  received  from  them  such 
violent  blows,  that  I  thought  my  last  hour  was 
come.  I  now  found  that  what  the  black  had 
told  me  was  no  exaggeration  ;  but  all  my  com- 
plaints were  useless.     I  was  obliged  to  suffer 


228        Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

this  torture  nearly  an  hour,  till  we  came  to  an- 
other hill  again,  when,  quite  shaken  to  pieces 
and  sadly  bruised,  I  again  crept  to  the  top  of 
the  coach,  and  took,  possession  of  my  former 
seat.'  No  wonder  he  concludes  this  part  of  his 
experiences  with  a  solemn  warning  to  travellers 
to  take  inside  places  in  English  post  coaches. 
"With  his  return  to  London  his  narrative  practi- 
cally ends.  But  the  rapid  sketch  here  given  of 
it  affords  no  sufficient  hint  of  the  abundance  of 
naif  detail,  of  simple  enthusiasm  and  kindly 
wonderment,  which  characterise  its  pages.  To 
complete  the  impression  given,  we  should  be  able 
to  suppose  the  writer  resting  contentedly  from 
a  solitary  literary  effort,  and  ending  tranquil 
days  as  a  kind  of  German  Dr.  Primrose,  telling 
grandchildren,  such  as  Chodowiecki  drew,  how 
he  once  saw  Goldsmith's  monument  in  the  Great 
Abbey  by  the  Thames,  and  heard  Pitt  speak  in 
the  Parliament  House  at  Westminster.  But 
this  is  to  reckon  without  the  all-recording  pages 
of  the  '  Allgemeine  Deutsche  Biographie,'  and 
that  harsh  resolvent,  Fact.  For  the  future  of 
Pastor  Moritz  was  not  at  all  in  this  wise.  Be- 
sides his  letters  to  his  '  dearest  Gedike,'  he 
wrote  many  other  works,  including  a  '  psycho- 
logical romance  '  and  *  Travels  in  Italy  ; '  be- 
came a   Fine-Art  Professor ;    married  late   in 


A  German  in  England,  229 

life,  but  not  happily ;  left  no  family  ;  and, 
last  of  all,  had  been  dead  two  years  when  the 
translation  which  has  formed  the  subject  of 
these  pages  was  first  introduced  to  English 
readers. 


OLD   VAUXHALL  GARDENS. 

*  In  gay  Vauxhall  now  saunter  beaux  and  belles, 
And  happier  cits  resort  to  Sadler's  Wells.' 

'T^HUS  sings  one  of  Sylvanus  Urban's  poets, 
-*■  describing  the  pleasures  of  Spring  in  the 
London  of  George  the  Second.  In  the  epithet 
'happier' — an  epithet  probably  suggested  by 
the  not  very  profound  observation  that  the  middle 
classes  as  a  rule  took  their  pleasure  less  sadly 
than  mere  persons  of  quality  —  there  is  'the 
least  little  touch  of  spleen.'  But  the  social  dis- 
tinction implied  between  the  fashionable  gardens 
on  the  Surrey  side  of  the  water  and  the  more 
popular  place  of  entertainment  from  which  the 
tired  dyer  and  his  melting  wife  are  trudging 
wearily  in  Hogarth's  '  Evening '  is  practically 
preserved  in  the  advertisements  to  be  found, 
between  May  and  August,  in  the  newspapers  of 
the  time.  Sadler's  Wells  is  specific  in  its  at- 
tractions, —  its  burletta  or  its  rope-dancer  : 
Vauxhall,  on  the  contrary,  with  a  disdainful  re- 
ticence,—  a  superbia  qucesita  merilis  befitting 
the  '  genuine  and  only  Jarley,'  —  shortly  sets 
forth  that  its  '  Evening  Entertainments '  will 
begin  on  such  a  date  ;  that  the  price  of  adrais- 


Old  yauxball  Gardens.  231 

sion  is  one  shilling  ;  and  that  the  doors  will  open 
at  five.  After  this  notification  it  continued,  at 
rare  intervals,  to  repeat  that  the  gardens  were  at 
the  service  of  the  public  ;  but  made  no  more  defi- 
nite sign.  Obviously  the  thing  to  do  was  to  go. 
With  the  help  of  a  few  old  pamphlets  and  de- 
scriptions, it  is  proposed  to  invite  the  reader  to 
make  that  expedition,  and  to  revive,  if  it  may  be, 
some  memory  of  a  place,  the  traces  of  which  are 
strewn  broadcast  over  the  literature  of  the  last 
century.  It  is  true  that  Vauxhall  Gardens  sur- 
vived to  a  date  much  later  than  this.  But  it  was 
Vauxhall  '  with  a  difference,'  and  the  Vauxhall 
here  intended  is  Vauxhall  in  its  prime,  between 
17)0  and  1790,  —  the  Vauxhall  of  Horace  Wal- 
pole  and  the  '  Connoisseur,'  —  of  Beau  Tibbs 
and  the  pawnbroker's  widow,  —  of  Fielding's 
*  Amelia '  and  Fanny  Burney's  *  Evelina.' 

In  17)0,  the  customary  approach  to  this 
earthly  paradise  was  still  along  that  silent  high- 
way of  the  Thames  over  which,  nearly  forty 
years  before.  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley  and  Mr. 
Spectator  had  been  rowed  by  the  wooden-legged 
waterman  who  had  fought  at  La  Hogue.  There 
was,  indeed,  a  bridge  built  or  being  built  at 
Westminster  ;  but  more  than  half  a  century  was 
to  elapse  before  there  was  another  at  Vauxhall. 
This  little  preliminary  boating-party,  especially 


232        Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes, 

to  the  accompaniment  of  French  horns,  must 
have  been  one  of  the  delights  of  the  journey, 
although,  if  we  are  to  believe  a  Gallic  poet  who 
addressed  a  copy  of  verses  upon  '  Le  Vauxhall 
de  Londres'  to  M.  de  Fontenelle,  '  le  trajet  du 
fleuve  fatal '  was  not  without  its  terrors  to 
would-be  visitors.  Goldsmith's  Mrs.  Tibbs,  at 
all  events,  had  '  a  natural  aversion  to  the  water,' 
and  when  Mr.  Matthew  Bramble  went,  he  went 
by  coach  for  fear  of  cold,  while  the  younger  and 
bolder  spirits  of  his  party  took  ship  from  Rane- 
lagh  in  '  a  wherry,  so  light  and  slender '  that, 
says  poetical  Miss  Lydia  Melford,  they  looked 
like  'fairies  sailing  in  a  nutshell.'  They  were 
four  in  the  boat,  she  nevertheless  adds,  besides 
the  oarsman  ;  and  if  this  paper  were  to  be  illus- 
trated by  fancy  pictures,  the  artist's  attention 
might  be  particularly  invited  to  that  very  fan- 
tastic fairy,  Mrs.  Tabitha  Bramble,  who,  we 
are  told,  '  with  her  rumpt  gown  and  petticoat, 
her  scanty  curls,  her  lappet-head,  deep  triple 
ruffles  and  high  stays,'  was  (in  Lady  Griskin's 
opinion)  '  twenty  good  years  behind  the  fashion.' 
"What  the  waterman  charged,  the  fair  Lydia  does 
not  tell  us  ;  but  he  probably  asked  more  than 
usual  for  so  exceptional  a  cargo.  Meanwhile, 
the  old  rates  shown  in  the  '  Court  and  City 
Registers '  of  the  time  are  moderate  enough. 


Old  yauxhall  Gardens.  233 

From  Whitehall  Stairs,  the  favourite  starting- 
place,  the  cost  of  a  pair  of  oars  was  sixpence  ; 
from  the  Temple  eightpence.  For  sculls  you 
paid  no  more  than  half. 

When,  after  passing  Lambeth  Palace  on  the 
left, — and  possibly  receiving  from  neighbour- 
ing boats  some  of  those  flowers  of  rhetoric  to 
which  Johnson  once  so  triumphantly  retorted,  — 
you  reached  Vauxhall  Stairs,  your  experiences 
were  still,  in  all  probability,  those  of  Lydia 
Melford  and  her  friends.  There  would  be  the 
same  crush  of  wherries  and  confusion  of  tongues 
at  the  landing-place,  and  the  same  crowd  of 
mud-larks  and  loafers  would  come  rushing  into 
the  water  to  offer  their  unsolicited  (but  not 
gratuitous)  services.  Once  free  of  these,  a  few 
steps  would  bring  you  to  the  unimposing  en- 
trance of  the  garden,  —  a  gate  or  wicket  in  the 
front  of  an  ordinary-looking  house.  Here  you 
either  exhibited  your  ticket,  or  paid  your  shil- 
ling ;  hurried,  not  without  a  throb  of  anticipa- 
tion, down  a  darkened  passage;  and  then,  if 
you  were  as  young  and  unsophisticated  as 
Fanny  Bolton  in  '  Pendennis,'  probably  uttered 
an  involuntary  exclamation  of  wonder  as,  with 
a  sudden  sound  of  muffled  music,  the  many- 
lighted  enclosure  burst  upon  your  view.  There 
seems  to  be  no  doubt  as  to  the  surprise,  height- 


234        Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

ened  of  course  by  the  mean  approach,  and  the 
genuine  fascination  of  this  first  impression.  The 
tall  elms  and  sycamores,  with  the  coloured 
lamps  braced  to  the  tree-trunks  or  twinkling 
through  the  leaves,  the  long  ranges  of  alcoves 
with  their  inviting  supper-tables,  the  brightly- 
shining  temples  and  pavilions,  the  fading  vistas 
and  the  ever-changing  groups  of  pleasure- 
seekers,  must  have  combined  to  form  a  whole 
which  fully  justified  the  enthusiasm  of  contem- 
poraries, even  if  it  did  not,  in  the  florid  language 
of  the  old  guide-books,  exactly  '  furnish  the  pen 
of  a  sublime  and  poetic  genius  with  inexhaustible 
scenes  of  luxuriant  fancy.' 

The  general  disposition  of  the  gardens  was 
extremely  simple  and,  in  Miss  Burney's  opinion, 
even  'formal.'  Opposite  you,  as  you  entered, 
was  the  Grand  Walk,  extending  the  entire  length 
of  the  enclosure  for  a  distance  of  900  feet,  and 
terminated,  at  the  farther  end,  by  a  gilded  statue 
of  Aurora,  apparently  '  tip-toe  on  the  mountain 
tops.'  For  this  was  afterwards  substituted  '  a 
Grand  Gothic  obelisk,'  at  the  corners  of  which 
were  painted  a  number  of  slaves  chained,  and 
over  them  the  inscription  : 

Spectator 
Fastidiosus 

SiBI     MOLESTUS 


Old  yauxJjall  Gardens.  235 

Beyond  the  end  of  this  walk  was  a  sunk-fence 
or  ha-ha  which  separated  the  gardens  from  the 
hayfields  then  adjoining  it.  Parallel  to  the 
Grand  Walk  ran  the  South  Walk  with  its  trium- 
phal arches  ;  next  to  this  again  was  the  covered 
alley  known  indifferently  as  the  Druid's  or  Lovers' 
Walk,  made  rather  for  '  whispering  lovers  '  than 
for  '  talking  age  ;  '  and  last  came  a  fourth  walk 
open  at  the  top.  Other  walks,  the  chief  of 
which  was  the  Cross  Walk,  traversed  the  garden 
from  side  to  side  ;  and  in  the  quadrangle  formed 
by  the  Grand  Walk,  the  Cross  Walk,  the  South 
Walk,  and  the  remaining  side  of  the  grounds, 
was  a  space  of  about  five  acres.  This,  which 
lay  to  the  right  of  the  entrance,  was  known  as 
the  Grove. 

The  chief  feature  of  the  Grove  was  its  open- 
air  orchestra,  at  first  no  more  than  a  modest 
structure  bearing  the  unambitious  title  of  the 
'rustic  music-house.'  But  about  1758,  this 
made  way  for  a  much  more  ornate  building  '  in 
the  Gothic  manner,'  having,  like  its  predecessor, 
pavilions  beneath  for  the  accommodation  of 
supper-parties.  Above,  it  contained  a  magnifi- 
cent organ,  in  front  of  which,  encircling  an 
open  space  for  the  singers,  were  ranged  the 
seats  and  desks  of  the  musicians.  This  second 
orchestra,  which  was  lavishly  ornamented  with 


236       Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes, 

niches  and  carvings,  was  surmounted  by  the 
ostrich  plumes  of  the  Prince  of  Wales.  The 
decorations  were  modelled  in  a  composition 
said  to  be  known  only  to  the  '  ingenious  archi- 
tect/ a  carpenter  named  Maidman,  and  the 
whole  was  painted  '  white  and  bloom  colour.' 
Immediately  behind  the  orchestra  was  a  build- 
ing described  as  '  a  Turkish  tent,'  with  a  carved 
blue  and  gold  dome  supported  on  eight  internal 
Ionic,  and  twelve  external  Doric  columns. 
This  was  profusely  embellished,  both  within  and 
without,  by  rich  festoons  of  flowers.  A  good 
idea  of  the  orchestra  in  its  renovated  form  may 
be  gathered  from  a  little  plate  by  Wale,  in  which 
the  supper-tables  are  shown  laid  out  in  front. 
These  for  a  long  time  were  covered  with  red 
baize,  an  arrangement  that  added  greatly  to  the 
general  effect,  which  was  further  enhanced  by 
arches  of  coloured  lamps  and  other  contrivances. 
There  is  a  tinted  design  by  Rowlandson  —  one 
indeed  of  his  most  popular  efforts  —  depicting  a 
motley  group  in  front  of  the  orchestra  during 
the  performance  of  Mrs.  Weichsel,  and  number- 
ing among  the  crowd  of  listeners  the  Prince  of 
Wales,  Perdita,  the  Duchess  of  Devonshire, 
Lady  Duncannon,  and  other  distinguished  per- 
sonages. In  a  supper-box  at  the  side  are  John- 
son, Boswell,  Goldsmith,  and  Mrs.  Thrale. 


Old  yauxhall  Gardens.  237 

The  musical  performances  in  the  orchestra 
generally  began  at  six.  At  first  they  were 
wholly  instrumental,  and  confined  to  '  sonatas 
and  concertos/  In  time,  however,  songs  were 
added  to  the  programme ;  and  later  still  these 
were  diversified  by  catches  and  glees,  which 
generally  came  in  the  middle  and  at  the  end  of 
the  sixteen  pieces  to  which  the  entertainment 
was  restricted.  Before  the  introduction  of  glees 
and  catches,  it  was  the  practice  to  wind  up  with 
a  duet  or  trio,  accompanied  by  a  chorus.  In 
the  old  Vauxhall  song-books  may  be  studied  the 
species  of  lyric  which  was  trilled  or  quavered 
nightly  from  the  Gothic  aviary  in  the  Grove. 
There  is  not  much  variety  in  these  hymns  to 
'Jem  of  Aberdovey'  or  *  Kate  of  Aberdare,'  and 
the  prevailing  tone  is  abjectly  sentimental.  A 
favourite  form  was  the  '  Rondeau,'  a  much  more 
rudimentary  production  than  the  little  French 
plaything  now  known  by  that  name,  and  charac- 
terised chiefly  by  its  immoderate  use  of  the 
refrain. 

'  Tarry  awhile  with  me,  my  Love, 
O  tarry  awhile  with  me.' 

This  is  the  artless  burden  of  one  of  the  '  cele- 
brated Roundelays '  sung  at  Vauxhall  by  the 
celebrated  Mrs.  Bland  {blandior  Orpheo  !)  to  the 


238        Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

music  of  the  equally  celebrated  Mr.  James 
Hook  ;  and  the  '  young  Shepherd  by  Love  sore 
opprest,  When  the  Maid  of  his  heart  he  fondly 
addrest,'  can  scarcely  be  acquitted  of  needless 
iteration.  But  the  music  was  often  of  a  much 
higher  kind,  and  the  beautiful  Shakespearean 
songs  of  Dr.  Augustine  Arne,  '  When  daisies 
pied,'  and  '  Where  the  bee  sucks,'  or  '  Water 
parted '  from  the  same  composer's  Opera  of 
*  Artaxerxes,'  alternated  occasionally  with  the 
more  popular  ditties  which  delighted  the  average 
listener.  Hook  (the  father  of  Theodore  Hook), 
who  was  organist  for  upward  of  forty  years,  and 
Arne,  who  often  conducted,  were  the  most  as- 
siduous composers.  Among  the  female  singers 
were  many  vocal  celebrities  of  the  last  century, 
—  Mrs.  Vincent  and  Miss  Brent  (of  whom  Gold- 
smith writes  in  *  The  Bee  '  and  *  The  Citizen  of 
the  World');  the  above-named  Mrs.  Weichsell, 
fair  mother  of  the  fairer  Mrs.  Billington  ;  Mrs. 
Mountain ;  and  for  men,  Lowe,  Denman,  Ver- 
non, the  '  great  Dignum,'  and  the  famous  tenor 
Beard,  whose  name,  together  with  that  of  one  of 
his  gentler  colleagues,  survives  in  Churchill's 
hectoring  couplets : 

•  Where  tyrants  rule,  and  slaves  with  joy  obey, 
Let  slavish  minstrels  pour  th'  enervate  lay; 
To  Britons  far  more  noble  pleasures  spring. 
In  native  notes  whilst  Beard  and  Vincent  sing.' 


Old  yauxball  Gardens.  239 

The  broad-shouldered  poet  of  the  '  Rosciad  ' 
and  the  '  Apology,'  it  may  be  added,  was  himself 
one  of  the  constant  frequenters  of  the  garden, 
where  he  was  wont  to  appear,  not  in  clerical 
black,  as  in  the  pit  of  Drury  Lane,  but  resplen- 
dent in  a  blue  coat,  white  silk  stockings,  silver 
shoe-buckles,  and  a  gold-laced  hat. 

The  '  native  notes  '  of  the  orchestra,  how- 
ever, could  only  be  comfortably  enjoyed  in  fine 
weather.  When  it  rained,  —  and  the  eighteenth 
century  had  no  immunity  in  this  respect,  —  the 
company,  like  Mr.  Bramble,  took  shelter  in  the 
Rotunda.  This  was  a  large  circular  saloon, 
entered  through  a  colonnade  to  the  left  of  the 
Grand  Walk.  It  was  freely  furnished  with 
busts,  mirrors,  sconces,  and  the  like.  But  its 
chief  glory  was  its  roof,  known  popularly  as 
*  the  Umbrella,'  and  specially  constructed  for 
musical  purposes.  Profusely  ornamented  with 
gilding  and  festoons,  it  seems  to  have  presented 
something  of  the  appearance  of  a  large  fluted 
shell.  When  the  '  new  music  room,'  as  it  was  at 
first  called,  was  erected,  the  organ  and  orchestra 
it  contained  fronted  the  entrance  through  the 
colonnade  in  the  Grove.  By  and  by  these  were 
moved  to  the  left,  so  as  to  face  a  new  room 
which  was  added  to  the  Rotunda,  and  ran  for- 
ward into  the  garden  at  the  back  of  the  colon- 


240        Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

nade,  parallel  to  the  Grove.  This  room,  sup- 
ported by  elaborate  columns,  and  lighted  from 
two  cupolas  painted  with  gods  and  goddesses, 
must  have  added  materially  to  the  attractions 
of  the  Rotunda  when  entered  through  it.  In 
course  of  time,  the  spaces  between  the  side 
columns  were  filled  with  large  pictures  repre- 
senting national  subjects,  from  the  brush  of 
Hogarth's  friend,  the  history  painter,  Frank 
Hayman.  In  one,  Britannia  distributed  laurels 
to  Lord  Granby  and  other  distinguished  officers  ; 
in  another,  Olive  received  the  homage  of  the 
Nabob ;  in  the  third,  Neptune  rejoiced  over 
Hawke's  victory  of  1759.  But  the  best  known, 
and  the  first  finished  of  the  group  —  it  was  ex- 
hibited in  1761  — was  the  surrender  of  Montreal 
to  Amherst.  "Whether  copies  of  these  still  exist 
we  know  not  ;  but,  to  judge  from  its  effect 
upon  Pastor  Moritz,  this  last,  at  all  events, 
must  have  had  its  merits.*  *  Among  the  paint- 
ings,' he  says,  '  one  represents  the  surrender  of 
a  besieged  city.  If  you  look  at  this  painting 
with  attention  for  any  length  of  time,  it  affects 
you  so  much  that  you  even  shed  tears.  The 
expression  of  the  greatest  distress,  even  border- 
ing on  despair,  on  the  part  of  the  besieged,  the 
fearful  expectation  of  the  uncertain  issue,  and 
1  See  the  preceding  paper,  *  A  German  in  England.* 


Old  yauxball  Gardens.  241 

what  the  victor  will  determine  concerning  those 
unfortunate  people,  may  all  be  read  so  plainly, 
and  so  naturally  in  the  countenances  of  the  in- 
habitants who  are  imploring  for  mercy,  from  the 
hoary  head  to  the  suckling  whom  his  mother 
holds  up,  that  you  quite  forget  yourself,  and  in 
the  end  scarcely  believe  it  to  be  a  painting 
before  you.' 

The  new  room  was  entered  through  a  Gothic 
portal  or  temple,  which  contained  portraits  ot 
George  the  Third  and  Queen  Charlotte,  and 
also  formed  the  starting-point  of  a  semicircular 
piazza  or  colonnade  that  swept  round  to  a  similar 
terminal  temple  at  the  end  of  the  arc.  Between 
these  two,  in  the  middle  of  the  semicircle,  was 
a  higher  central  structure  denominated  in  old 
prints  the  Temple  of  Comus.  This  is  said, 
rather  vaguely,  to  have  been  '  embellished  with 
rays,'  and  had  above  it  a  large  star  or  sun, 
which,  from  the  description,  would  seem  to 
have  been  illuminated  at  night.  Inside,  it  was 
painted  with  a  composition  '  in  the  Chinese 
taste '  representing  Vulcan  catching  Mars  and 
Venus  in  the  historical  net,  the  painter  being 
named  (not  inappropriately)  Risquet.  The  two 
pavilions  or  alcoves  immediately  adjoining  also 
contained  pictures.  To  the  right  a  lady  and 
gentleman  were  shown  entering  Vauxhall  ;  to 
16 


242        Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

the  left  was  a  presumably  emblematic  design 
of  '  Friendship  on  the  grass,  drinking.'  Other 
boxes  fitted  for  the  accommodation  of  supper- 
parties,  but  having  no  pictorial  decorations,  ex- 
tended on  either  side  of  the  Temple  of  Comus. 
Of  the  terminal  temples,  one,  as  already 
stated,  served  as  the  porch  to  the  new  room  ; 
its  fellow  at  the  farther  end  ultimately  formed 
the  entrance  to  a  famous  and  popular  entertain- 
ment referred  to  in  a  former  paper,^  and  known 
indifferently  as  the  '  Waterworks '  or  the  '  Cas- 
cade.' Some  of  the  earlier  references  to  this, 
or  to  its  earliest  form^  are  more  or  less  con- 
temptuous, as  the  '  World,'  the  *  Connoisseur,' 
and  the  '  Gray's  Inn  Journal '  all  speak  of  it 
slightingly  as  the  '  Tin  Cascade.'  But,  as  time 
went  on,  it  must  have  been  greatly  improved. 
Here  is  Moritz's  description  of  it  in  1782 : 
'  Lateish  in  the  evening  [i.  e.  about  nine  o'clock], 
we  were  entertained  with  a  sight,  that  is  indeed 
singularly  curious  and  interesting.  In  a  particu- 
lar part  of  the  garden,  a  curtain  was  drawn  up, 
and  by  means  of  some  mechanism,  of  extraordi- 
nary ingenuity,  the  eye  and  the  ear  are  so  com- 
pletely deceived,  that  it  is  not  easy  to  persuade 
one's-self  it  is  a  deception ;  and  that  one  does 
not  actually  see  and  hear  a  natural  waterfall  from 
1  See  ante,  —  '  The  Citizen  of  the  World.' 


Old  yauxhall  Gardens.  243 

an  high  rock/  The  next  sentence  adds  a  char- 
acteristic detail :  '  As  every  one  was  flocking 
to  this  scene  in  crowds,  there  arose  all  at  once, 
a  loud  cry  of  *'  Take  care  of  your  pockets." 
This  informed  us,  but  too  clearly,  that  there  were 
some  pick-pockets  among  the  crowd,  who  had 
already  made  some  fortunate  strokes.'  Ten 
years  later  still,  many  other  details  and  effects 
must  have  been  added,  since  the  descriptions 
speak  of  representations  of  trees  blown  by  the 
wind,  of  thatches  torn  off,  of  wagons  and  troops 
of  soldiers  crossing  bridges,  etc.  By  this  time, 
in  fact,  it  was  a  monster  'moving  picture,'  of 
the  kind  which  Pinchbeck  and  Fawkes  were  in 
the  habit  of  exhibiting  at  Bartholomew  Fair. 
But  in  Goldsmith's  day  it  was  still  in  the  ele- 
mentary stage  described  by  Sylvanus  Urban  in 
August,  1765,  that  is  to  say,  it  exhibited  'a 
beautiful  landscape  in  perspective,  with  a  miller's 
house,  a  water-mill,  and  a  cascade.'  At  the 
proper  moment  this  last  presented  the  exact 
appearance  of  water  flowing  down  a  declivity, 
rising  up  in  a  foam  at  the  bottom,  and  then 
gliding  away. 

Beyond  the  terminal  temple  v/hich  served  as 
the  approach  to  the  water-works  a  sweep  of 
pavilions  led  back  to  the  Grand  Walk.  In  the 
last  of  these  was  a  picture   of  Gay's   *  Black 


244       Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

Eyed  Susan,'  taken  apparently  at  that  affecting 
moment  when,  returning  to  shore  from  her 
faithful  William,  she  *  waved  her  lily  hand.'  A 
little  higher  the  Grand  Walk  was  intersected  at 
right  angles  by  the  Grand  Cross  Walk,  which, 
as  already  stated,  traversed  the  gardens.  To 
the  right  this  was  terminated  by  the  Druid's 
Walk  and  a  statue  of  Apollo  ;  to  the  left,  by  one 
of  the  favourite  illusions  of  the  place,  a  large 
painting  representing  ruins  and  running  water. 
In  this  part  of  the  garden,  as  far  as  it  is  possible  to 
make  it  out  from  the  descriptions,  extending  on 
the  left  towards  the  bottom,  were,  on  one  side, 
a  Wilderness,  on  the  other  Rural  Downs  '  with 
several  little  eminences  ,  .  .  after  the  manner 
of  a  Roman  camp.'  These  were  '  covered  with 
turf,  and  pleasingly  interspersed  with  cypress, 
fir,  yew,  cedar,  and  tulip  trees.'  On  one  of 
these  heights,  the  attentive  spectator  soon  dis- 
covered, like  Pastor  Moritz,  Roubillac's  statue 
(in  lead)  of  Milton  '  seated  on  a  rock,  in  an  at- 
titude listening  to  soft  music,'  as  described  by 
himself,  in  his  '  II  Penseroso.'  At  night  this 
statue  was  lighted  with  lamps.  From  the 
downs,  say  the  old  guide  books,  you  had  a 
good  view  of  Lambeth,  Westminster,  and  St. 
Paul's.  It  was  in  this  part  of  the  garden  also, 
from  some  of  the  bushes  of  the  Roman  camp,  that 


Old  yauxhall  Gardens.  245 

proceeded  the  subterranean  entertainment  known 
as  the  '  Fairy  Music'  But  this  '  lodging  on 
the  cold  ground,'  to  quote  the  old  Caroline 
song,  was  found  '  prejudicial  to  the  instruments,' 
probably  also  to  the  instrumentalists,  and  it  was 
eventually  discontinued. 

If,  turning  your  back  upon  the  picture  of 
ruins  and  running  water,  you  followed  the  Cross 
"Walk  behind  the  pavilions  which  formed  the 
north  side  of  the  Grove,  you  came  upon  the 
South  Walk,  which  ran  parallel  to  the  Grand 
"Walk.  The  speciality  of  this  promenade  was 
its  '  three  splendid  triumphal  arches.'  The 
vista  through  these  arches  was,  at  first,  closed 
by  a  pictorial  representation  of  the  Ruins  of  Pal- 
myra. But  the  simulated  ruins  themselves  grew 
ruinous,  and  finally  made  way  for  *  a  noble  view 
of  architecture  designed  by  Sandby  [no  doubt 
Hogarth's  opponent  of  that  name],  and  painted 
by  Mortimer.'  At  night  the  same  painter's  work 
was  exhibited  in  the  form  of  an  illuminated 
transparency.  "Where  the  South  "Walk  ran 
parallel  to  the  right  side  of  the  Grove  was  a 
further  range  of  pavilions,  part  of  which  formed 
a  semicircle  shaded  in  front  by  lofty  trees.  In 
the  centre  of  this  semicircle  stood,  for  some 
time,  the  cynosure  of  "Vauxhall,  Roubillac's 
statue  of  Handel,  fatherless  than  life-size,  in  the 


246       Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

character  of  Orpheus  playing  on  his  lyre.  It 
was,  however,  frequently  moved  ;  and  its  differ- 
ent positions  are  a  source  of  considerable  mys- 
tification to  the  student  of  the  old  prints  of  the 
place.  In  1774,  according  to  Smith's  '  Nolle- 
kens,'  it  had  its  habitat  *  under  an  inclosed  lofty 
arch,  surmounted  by  a  figure  [of  Saint  Cecilia] 
playing  the  violoncello,  attended  by  two  boys ; 
and  it  was  then  screened  from  the  weather  by 
a  curtain,  which  was  drawn  up  when  the  visitors 
arrived.'  In  Canaletto's  view  of  six  years  later 
it  is  disporting  itself  in  the  open,  as  above  de- 
scribed ;  but  after  the  new  Gothic  orchestra  was 
erected,  it  seems  to  have  returned  to  its  original 
retreat,  and  later  still  had  found  an  asylum  in  a 
new  supper-room  which  was  added  to  the  Ro- 
tunda. Bartolozzi  is  credited  with  a  fine  en- 
graving of  this  statue,  which  was  the  first  work 
Roubillac  carved  in  England.  The  statue  is 
also  said  to  have  been  highly  '  approved  of  by 
Mr.  Pope  ;*  and  it  may  be  added  that  the  ears, 
which,  as  becoming  in  a  composer,  were  espe- 
cially beautiful,  were  modelled  from  those  of 
the  daughter  of  the  patentee  of  Covent  Garden 
Theatre,  —  the  Miss  Rich  (afterwards  Mrs. 
Horsley),  of  whose  alleged  portrait  by  Hogarth 
there  is  a  beautiful  modern  mezzotint  by  Samuel 
Cousins.      From  the  descriptions  of  critics,  the 


Old  yauxhall  Gardens.  247 

Handel  must  nevertheless  have  been  a  repose- 
less  and  somewhat  *  tortured '  performance.  It 
did  not  always  remain  at  Vauxhall,  and  ulti- 
mately passed  into  the  keeping  of  the  descend- 
ants of  the  proprietor  of  the  garden,  where  we 
need  no  further  follow  its  fortunes. 

As  already  stated,  each  of  the  four  sides  of 
the  quadrangle  which  enclosed  the  Grove  was 
occupied  by  pavilions,  alcoves,  or  booths  fitted 
up  for  the  accommodation  of  supper-parties, 
These  were  of  varying  importance,  since  we  are 
expressly  informed,  in  '  The  Citizen  of  the 
World,'  that  some  were  more  '  genteel '  than 
others,  and  that  those  in  that  '  very  focus  of 
public  view,'  affected  by  Goldsmith's  Beau  and 
his  lady  were  appropriated  more  or  less  by  per- 
sons of  position.  The  one  that  fronted  the 
Orchestra  was  larger  than  the  rest,  having  been 
specially  built  for  Frederick,  Prince  of  Wales. 
It  was  decorated  by  Hayman  with  paintings 
from  '  The  Tempest,'  '  King  Lear,'  '  Macbeth,' 
and  '  Henry  the  Fifth,'  and  had  behind  it  a 
handsome  drawing-room. 

The  mention  of  the  decorations  in  the  Prince 
of  Wales's  pavilion  recalls  one  of  the  historical 
attractions  of  the  gardens,  —  the  pictures  in  the 
other  supper-boxes.  At  night-time  each  of  these 
was  ♦  enlightened  to  the  front  with  globes  ;  '  and 


248        Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

a  story  which  has  always  seemed  to  us  a  little 
indefinite,  traces  the  first  suggestion  of  them  to 
Hogarth.  But  one  of  the  earliest  and  most 
trustworthy  of  the  guides  —  the  '  Sketch  of  the 
Spring  Gardens,  Vauxhall :  In  a  Letter  to  a 
Noble  Lord' — implies  that  Hayman  was  the 
true  originator  in  this  matter.  It  is  certain, 
however,  that  Hogarth  contributed  specimens 
of  his  own  works  to  the  cause,  and  that  others 
were  copied.  According  to  his  first  annotator, 
Nichols,  Hayman  reproduced  the  '  Four  Times 
of  the  Day'  for  Vauxhall  ;  and  in  1782  two  of 
these,  '  Evening  '  and  '  Night,'  were  still  there, 
and  must  have  been  seen  by  Moritz  ;  while  in 
the  portico  of  the  Rotunda  was  an  unquestioned 
picture  from  Hogarth's  own  brush,  Henry  the 
Eighth  and  Anne  Boleyn,  —  names  which,  it  was 
popularly  whispered,  but  thinly  veiled  the  like- 
nesses of  Frederick,  Prince  of  Wales,  and  his 
mistress,  Anne  Vane,  not  to  be  confused  with  the 
notorious  '  Lady  of  Quality '  of  the  same  sur- 
name in  Smollett's  '  Peregrine  Pickle.'  Another 
work  claimed  as  Hogarth's  when,  years  after, 
obscured  by  dirt  and  slashed  by  sandwich 
knives,  the  relics  of  the  little  gallery  came  to 
the  hammer,  was  Harper  and  Mrs.  Clive  (then 
Miss  Raftor)  as  *  Jobson  the  Cobbler'  and  his 
wife  '  Nell '  in  Coffey's  farce  of  'The  Devil  to 


Old  yauxhall  Gardens.  249 

pay  ;  or,  the  Wives  Metamorphosed  ; '  but  this, 
as  well  as  a  nautical  genre  picture  called  '  The 
Wapping  Landlady,'  is  plainly  attributed  to 
Hayman  in  the  contemporary  prints  of  Sayer. 
It  is  probable  also  that  Hayman  had  the  chief 
hand  in  '  Mademoiselle  Catherina,'  a  diminutive 
lady  whose  history  has  escaped  the  chroniclers, 
and  '  Building  Houses  with  Cards,'  although 
the  two  children  in  the  latter  have  certainly  a 
look,  of  his  more  illustrious  contemporary.  But, 
on  the  whole,  it  may  be  concluded  that  there 
was  little  of  Hogarth's  original  work  among  the 
sea-fights,  popular  games  {e.g.  the  time-honoured 
pastimes  of  '  Bob  Cherry  '  and  '  Hot  Cockles '), 
and  other  engaging  compositions  which  delighted 
the  simple  soul  of  the  pawnbroker's  widow  and 
disgusted  the  eclectic  Mr.  Tibbs,  full  of  Grisoni 
and  the  grand  contorno.  Hogarth's  picture  in 
the  Rotunda  portico,  coupled  with  his  permis- 
sion to  reproduce  his  other  works,  would,  how- 
ever, be  ground  enough  to  justify  the  gold  ticket 
In  perpetuam  Beneficii  memoriam  with  which  he 
was  presented  by  the  grateful  proprietor.  This 
ticket,  which  admitted  '  a  coachful,'  that  is,  six 
persons,  was,  in  1808,  in  the  possession  of  Mrs. 
Hogarth's  cousin,  Mary  Lewis,  in  whose  arms 
the  painter  died.  It  had  passed  to  other  hands 
in  1825,  when,  with  five  silver  passes,  all  said  to 


250       Eighteenth  Centufy  Vignettes. 

be  struck  from  Hogarth's  designs,  and  including 
among  the  rest  that  of  George  Carey,  the  author 
of  many  Vauxhall  songs,  it  was  engraved  for  the 

*  Londina  Illustrata  '  of  Wilicinson. 

The  greater  part  of  the  literary  memories  of 
"Vauxhall  Gardens  cluster  round  these  gaily 
painted  boxes  from  which,  at  some  moment  of 
their  careers,  most  of  the  notabilities  of  the  day 
had  taken  their  view  of  '  many-coloured  life.* 
Churchill  we  have  already  seen  there  in  his 
habit  as  he  lived ;  and  Collins  is  said  to  have 
divided  his  attentions  between  Vauxhall  and  the 
playhouses.  Goldsmith  and  Reynolds,  we  know, 
were  frequent  visitors  ;  Johnson,  according  to 
Dr.  Maxwell  (and  in  spite  of  Rowlandson),  was 
more  partial  to  Ranelagh.     It  is  in  Vauxhall's 

*  proud  alcoves  '  that  Fielding  places  one  of  the 
scenes  of  '  Amelia  ; '  prefacing  it  with  a  hand- 
some compliment  to  the  extreme  '  elegance ' 
and  '  beauty  '  of  the  place.  The  account  of  the 
rudeness  which  his  heroine  and  her  party  suffered 
from  Captain  Trent  and  his  companions  is 
scarcely  separable  from  its  context,  although  it 
conveys  a  graphic  idea,  confirmed  by  other 
records,  of  the  annoyances  to  which  the  more 
peaceable  visitors  were  occasionally  exposed  at 
the  hands  of  the  Georgian  man-about-town. 
But  there  is  a  pen-and-ink  picture  in  Colman 


Old  yauxhall  Gardens.  251 

and  Thornton's  *  Connoisseur '  which,  although 
mainly  levelled  at  the  exorbitant  prices  of  pro- 
visions, may  be  taken  to  depict  pretty  accu- 
rately the  humours  of  an  ordinary  middle-class 
family  at  Vauxhall.  Mr.  Rose,  a  tradesman, 
his  wife,  and  his  two  daughters,  make  the  turn 
of  the  place,  and  then  sit  down  to  supper.  '  Do 
let  us  have  a  chick,  papa,'  says  one  of  the  young 
ladies.  Papa  replies  that  '  they  are  half  a 
crown  apiece,  and  no  bigger  than  a  sparrow.' 
Thereupon  he  is  very  properly  rebuked  by  his 
wife  for  his  stinginess.  '  When  one  is  out  upon 
pleasure,'  she  says,  *  I  love  to  appear  like  some- 
body ;  and  what  signifies  a  few  shillings  once 
and  away,  when  a  body  is  about  it  ? '  So  the 
chick  is  ordered,  and  brought.  And  then  en- 
sues a  dialogue  between  the  cit  and  the  waiter, 
in  which  the  former,  from  the  price  of  the 
sample  before  him,  ironically  estimates  the  price 
of  an  entire  Vauxhall  ham  to  be  about  jQ2i3f, 
and  after  being  decorated  by  his  wife  with  a 
coloured  handkerchief  by  way  of  bib,  proceeds 
to  eat,  saying  at  every  mouthful,  *  There  goes 
twopence,  there  goes  threepence,  there  goes 
a  groat.'  Beef  and  cheese-cakes,  which  are 
also  freely  commented  upon,  follow,  and  finally 
Mr.  Rose  calls  for  a  bottle  of  port,  the  size  of 
which    does    not    escape    invidious   comparison 


252        Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

with  the  more  generous  vessels  of  the  Jerusalem 
Coffee  House,  although  the  contents  have  the 
effect  of  soothing  the  critic  into  the  unvi^onted 
extravagance  of  a  second  pint.  Then,  after  the 
old  lady  has  observed  upon  the  rudeness  of  the 
gentlemen,  who  stare  her  out  of  countenance 
with  their  spy-glasses,  and  the  younger  girl  is 
speculating  whether,  if  she  buys  the  words  of 
the  last  new  song,  she  can  carry  home  the  tune, 
arrives  the  reckoning,  which  is  exactly  thirteen 
shillings  and  twopence.  The  last  glimpse  we 
get  of  the  little  party  shows  them  leaving  the 
gardens  in  a  shower.  Madam  with  her  upper 
petticoat  thrown  over  her  head,  her  daughters 
with  turned-up  skirts,  and  Paterfamilias  with  his 
flapped  hat  tied  round  with  a  pocket-handker- 
chief, his  coat  buttoned  to  save  his  laced  waist- 
coat, and  his  wife's  cardinal  spread  wrong  side 
out  over  his  shoulders  to  save  his  coat.  So 
they  sally  out  to  their  hack  —  he  lamenting  half 
humorously,  half  ruefully,  that  he  might  have 
spent  his  evening  at  Sot's  Hole  for  fourpence 
halfpenny,  whereas  Vauxhall,  with  the  coach 
hire,  will  have  cost  him  *  almost  a  pound.'  In 
the  'Wits'  Magazine  '  for  1784  you  may  see  the 
whole  group  depicted  to  the  life  after  the  broad, 
ungentle  fashion  of  the  time. 
That  the  cost  of  the  refreshments  was  a  fer- 


Old  yaiixhall  Gardens.  253 

tile  topic  of  discussion  is,  to  cite  but  one  of 
many  witnesses,  confirmed  by  Miss  Burney  in 
'  Evelina  ; '  and  the  popular  legend  that  an  ex- 
pert Vauxhall  carver  could  cover  the  entire 
garden  (about  eleven  acres)  with  slices  from  one 
ham,  may  be  accepted  as  corroborative  evi- 
dence. Old  frequenters,  indeed,  pretended  to 
remember  the  particular  angle  at  which  the 
plates  had  to  be  carried  to  prevent  their  leaf-like 
contents  from  becoming  the  plaything  of  the 
winds.  But  the  above  picture  from  the  '  Con- 
noisseur,' it  must  be  noted,  is  a  picture  of  the 
occasional  visitor,  —  the  visitor  who  made  but 
one  annual  visit,  which  was  the  event  of  the 
year.  The  main  supporters  of  the  place  were 
the  persons  of  quality,  of  whom  Walpole  gossips 
so  delightfully  in  his  correspondence  ;  and  it  is 
to  his  pages  that  one  must  go  for  a  faithful  rep- 
resentation of  High  Life  at  Vauxhall.  In  one 
of  his  letters  to  George  Montagu,  he  describes, 
with  his  inimitable  air  of  a  fine  gentleman  on  a 
frolic,  a  party  of  pleasure  at  which  he  has  as- 
sisted, and  which  (he  considers)  exhibits  '  the 
manners  of  the  age.'  He  tells  how  he  receives 
a  card  from  Lady  Caroline  Petersham  (the 
Duke  of  Grafton's  daughter)  to  go  with  her  to 
Vauxhall.  Thereupon  he  repairs  to  her  house, 
and  finds  '  her  and  the  little  Ashe,  or  the  Pollard 


254       Eighteenth  Century  yignettes. 

Ashe,  as  they  call  her,'  having  '  just  finished 
their  last  layer  of  red,  and  looking  as  handsome 
as  crimson  can  make  them.'  Others  of  the 
company  are  the  Duke  of  Kingston,  Lord 
March  of  Thackeray's  '  Virginians,'  Mr.  White- 
hed,  *  a  pretty  Miss  Beauclerc,  and  a  very 
foolish  Miss  Sparre.'  As  they  '  sail  up  the 
Mall,'  they  encounter  cross-grained  Lord  Pe- 
tersham (my  lady's  husband),  'as  sulky  as  a 
ghost  that  nobody  will  speak  to  first,'  and  who 
declines  to  accompany  his  wife  and  her  friends. 
So  they  march  to  their  barge,  which  has  '  a  boat 
of  French  horns  attending,'  and  little  Ashe 
sings.  After  parading  up  and  down  the  river, 
they  *  debark '  at  Vauxhall,  where  at  the  outset 
they  narrowly  escape  the  excitement  of  a  duel. 
For  a  certain  Mrs.  Lloyd  of  Spring  Gardens 
(afterwards  married  to  Lord  Haddington),  seeing 
Miss  Beauclerc  and  her  companion  following 
Lady  Petersham,  says  audibly,  '  Poor  girls,  I 
am  sorry  to  see  them  in  such  bad  company,'  a 
remark  which  '  the  foolish  Miss  Sparre  '  (she  is 
but  fifteen),  for  the  fun  of  seeing  a  duel,  en- 
deavours to  make  Lord  March  resent.  But  my 
Lord,  who  is  '  very  lively  and  agreeable,'  laughs 
her  out  of  '  this  charming  frolic  with  a  great 
deal  of  humour.'  'At  last,'  says  Walpole, — 
and  here  we  may  surrender  the  story  to  him 


Old  yauxhall  Gardens.  255 

entirely,  —  '  we  assembled  in  our  booth,  Lady 
Caroline  in  the  front,  with  the  vizor  of  her  hat 
erect,  and  looking  gloriously  jolly  and  hand- 
some. She  had  fetched  my  brother  Orford 
from  the  next  box,  where  he  was  enjoying  him- 
self with  his  petite  partie,  to  help  us  to  mince 
chickens.  We  minced  seven  chickens  into  a 
china  dish,  which  Lady  Caroline  stewed  over  a 
lamp,  with  three  pats  of  butter  and  a  flagon  of 
water,  stirring,  and  rattling,  and  laughing,  and 
we  every  minute  expecting  to  have  the  dish  fly 
about  our  ears.  She  had  brought  Betty  [Neale] 
the  fruit  girl,  with  hampers  of  strawberries  and 
cherries  from  Rogers's,  and  made  her  wait  upon 
us,  and  then  made  her  sup  by  us  at  a  little  table. 
The  conversation  was  no  less  lively  than  the 
whole  transaction.  There  was  a  Mr.  O'Brien 
arrived  from  Ireland,  who  would  get  the 
Duchess  of  Manchester  from  Mr.  Hussey  if 
she  were  still  at  liberty.  I  took  up  the  biggest 
hautboy  in  the  dish,  and  said  to  Lady  Caroline, 
**  Madam,  Miss  Ashe  desires  you  would  eat 
this  O'Brien  strawberry  ;  "  she  replied  immedi- 
ately, "  I  won't,  you  hussey."  You  may  im- 
agine the  laugh  this  reply  occasioned.  After 
the  tempest  was  a  little  calmed,  the  Pollard 
said,  *'  Now,  how  anybody  would  spoil  this 
story  that  was  to  repeat  it  and  say,  I  won't,  you 


256        Eighteenth  Century  Fignettes. 

jade  1 "  In  short,  the  whole  air  of  our  party 
was  sufficient,  as  you  will  easily  imagine,  to 
take  up  the  whole  attention  of  the  garden  ;  so 
much  so,  that  from  eleven  o'clock  till  half  an 
hour  after  one  we  had  the  whole  concourse 
round  our  booth  ;  at  last  they  came  into  the 
little  gardens  of  each  booth  on  the  sides  of  ours, 
till  Harry  Vane  took  up  a  bumper  and  was  pro- 
ceeding to  treat  them  with  still  greater  freedom. 
It  was  three  o'clock  before  we  got  home,' 

Whether  this  '  frisk  '  in  good  society  included 
the  passage  of  the  Dark  Walk,  their  chronicler 
has  not  related.  But  the  Dark  Walk,  also 
known  as  the  *  Druid's,'  or  '  Lovers'  Walk,'  is 
almost  the  only  feature  of  the  gardens  which 
now  needs  to  be  described.  Its  position  has 
already  been  roughly  indicated.  It  was  formed 
by  tall  overarching  trees  meeting  at  the  top,  in 
which,  in  the  place's  palmiest  days,  blackbirds, 
thrushes,  and  nightingales  made  their  nests.  A 
visit  to  this  selva  oscura  was  the  prime  ambition 
of  the  more  inquiring  visitor  to  Vauxhall,  either 
upon  the  simple  ground  put  forward  by  the 
elder  Miss  Rose  in  the  '  Connoisseur '  that  it  was 
*  solentary ,'  or  upon  the  more  specious  excuse, 
advanced  by  the  generality,  that  the  music  of  the 
Orchestra  sounded  better  through  the  thick  foli- 
age of  the  trees.     But  the  pretexts  for  seeking 


Old  yauxhall  Gardens.  257 

these  attractive  shades  were  probably  as  mani- 
fold as  the  conventional  reasons  for  drinking,  the 
last  of  which  was  '  any  other  reason.'  In  Miss 
Burney's  '  Evelina,'  that  delightful  heroine  is 
decoyed  into  the  Dark  Walk  by  her  vulgar 
friends  the  Branghtons.  There  she  is  insulted 
by  a  gang  of  rakes,  and  is  rescued  by  Sir  Cle- 
ment Willoughby,  who,  apparently  under  the 
influence  of  the  genius  loci,  proceeds,  after  cer- 
tain impertinences,  to  make  her  a  spasmodic 
declaration,  plentifully  punctuated  with  dashes 
in  this  wise,  —  '  O  Miss  Anville,  —  loveliest  of 
women,  —  forgive  me  ;  —  my  —  I  beseech  you 
forgive  me  ;  —  if  I  have  offended  —  if  I  have 
hurt  you,  —  I  could  kill  myself  at  the  thought ! ' 
etc.  Thus  this  *  most  impetuous  of  men  ; '  and 
thus  did  they  make  love  in  Vauxhall's  '  green 
retreats  '  '  when  George  was  king.'  Nor  love 
alone,  apparently  ;  for  if  the  old  descriptions  are 
strictly  accurate  in  representing  some  of  its  fre- 
quenters as  yelling  *  in  sounds  fully  as  terrific  as 
the  imagined  horrors  of  Cavalcanti's  blood- 
hounds,' there  must  have  been  a  considerable 
amount  of  more  than  questionable  horse-play 
besides  ;  and  the  licensing  magistrates  who,  in 
1763,  bound  the  proprietors  to  do  away  with 
the  '  dark  walks,'  and  to  appoint  proper  watch- 
men, were  no  doubt  well  advised. 
17 


258        Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

From  the  use  of  the  plural  '  walks,'  it  may 
be  that  the  prohibition  also  included  the  numer- 
ous wildernesses  which  occupied  the  north  of 
the  enclosure,  —  wildernesses  so  intricate  that, 
even  in  the  prehistoric  era  of  the  place,  the 
most  experienced  mothers  —  to  use  the  ex- 
pressive words  of  Tom  Brown  '  of  facetious 
memory '  —  often  '  lost  themselves  in  look- 
ing for  their  daughters.'  And  this  brings  us 
to  the  final  item  in  our  catalogue,  the  walk 
which  bounded  the  garden  on  the  north,  closing 
and  terminating  the  four  great  promenades  that 
traversed  it  from  top  to  bottom.  This,  shaded 
like  the  rest  by  trees,  had  at  each  end  one  of 
the  favourite  '  scenes.'  That  to  the  east  was 
a  view  in  a  Chinese  garden  ;  that  to  the  west, 
a  building  with  a  scaffold  and  a  ladder  be- 
fore it,  which  at  a  distance  '  often  deceived 
the  eye  very  agreeably.'  History  has  ne- 
glected the  artist  of  these  ingenious  perform- 
ances. But  Hayman  had  begun  with  stage 
decoration,  and  may  perhaps  have  executed 
them.  Or  they  may  have  been  from  the  brush 
of  George  Lambert,  the  well-known  scene- 
painter  of  Covent  Garden,  who,  like  Hayman, 
was  a  friend  of  Hogarth,  and  is  reported  to 
have  borne  his  part'  in  the  beautifying  of  the 
place. 


Old  Vauxhall  Gardens.  259 

In  the  foregoing  sketch  we  have  endeav- 
oured to  revive  some  specific  idea  of  the  aspect 
of  a  forgotten  place  of  amusement,  rather  than 
to  produce  tliat  indefinite  patchv/ork  of  anec- 
dote which,  with  a  judicious  sprinkling  of  shoe- 
buckles  and  periwigs,  of  hoops  and  gipsy-hats, 
so  often  does  duty  for  a  '  picture  of  the  time.' 
But  a  last  word  must  certainly  be  devoted  to 
the  proprietor  and  presiding  spirit,  Jonathan 
Tyers.  Little  seems  to  be  known  of  him  be- 
fore he  acquired  the  site  of  the  old  Spring 
Garden  of  the  'Spectator'  in  March,  1728, 
from  one  Elizabeth  Masters,  of  London,  upon  a 
thirty  years'  lease.  Even  then  it  must  have  had 
many  of  the  appurtenances  of  a  public  resort, 
for  the  deed  enumerates  a  Ham-room  and  a 
Milk-house,  and  there  were  already  primitive 
alcoves  in  the  shape  of  tiled  arbours  entitled 
Royal  George,  Ship,  Eagle,  Phoenix,  Checker, 
and  the  like.  Nay,  there  were  already  lofty 
trees  which  dated  from  the  seventeenth  century 
and  the  days  of  an  earlier  possessor^  the  Sir 
Samuel  Morland  of  Pepys's  Diary.  The  rent 
v/hich  Tyers  paid  was  £250.  He  added  music  ; 
then  by  degrees  the  orchestra  and  organ,  the 
statues,  the  pictures,  and  the  other  adornments. 
He  opened  the  garden  in  June,  1732,  with  illu- 
minations and    a   Ridotto    aV   fresco,    at  which 


26o        Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

Frederick,  Prince  of  Wales,  was  present ;  and 
the  company,  numbering  four  hundred,  wore 
masks,  dominoes,  and  lawyers'  gowns.  Order 
was  kept  by  a  detachment  of  footguards,  and 
the  admission  ticket  was  designed  by  Jack 
Laguerre,  son  of  the  Louis  whose  muscular 
saints  sprawl,  in  Pope's  verse,  upon  the  ceil- 
ings of  '  Timon's  Villa.'  Payment  was  subse- 
quently made  at  the  gate  ;  but  in  1738,  appar- 
ently with  a  view  to  render  the  attendance 
somewhat  more  select,  a  thousand  silver  season 
tickets  were  issued.  In  1752  Tyers  purchased 
part  of  the  estate  out  and  out,  and  a  few  years 
afterwards  acquired  the  remainder.  To  the  last 
day  of  his  life  he  retained  the  keenest  interest 
in  the  place,  and  only  a  few  hours  before  his 
death  caused  himself  to  be  carried  into  the 
gardens  to  take  a  parting  look  at  them.  At  his 
country-seat  of  Denbies  near  Dorking  in 
Surrey,  he  had  another  private  garden,  in  the 
embellishment  of  which  he  must  have  found  an 
outlet  for  some  otherwise  obstructed  eccentri- 
city, since  it  contained  a  representation  of  the 
Valley  of  the  Shadow  of  Death,  where,  in  an 
alcove,  had  been  depicted,  in  two  compartments, 
the  ends  of  the  infidel  and  the  Christian.  Ac- 
cording to  the  *  Gentleman's  Magazine,'  Tyers 
passed  through  the  Valley  himself  in  July,  1767. 


Old  yauxhall  Gardens.  261 

His  descendants  long  continued  to  manage 
Vauxhall  Gardens.  Perhaps  the  most  notable 
of  these  was  his  eldest  son  Tom,  the  friend  and 
biographer  of  Johnson,  and  the  '  Tom  Restless  ' 
of  the  '  Idler.' 


GENERAL  INDEX. 


GENERAL   INDEX. 


The  titles  of  articles  are  in  Capitals. 


A. 

Addison,  Joseph,  39,  55,  80, 
82,  114,  117,  185. 

Adolphus,  John  Leycester,  189. 

Adventurer,  Hawksworth's,  98. 

Agreeable  Surprise,  O'  Keeff e's, 
223. 

Ailesbury,  Countess  of,  162. 

Albemarle,  Lord,  150. 

Alcander,  Pope's,  39. 

Alefounder,  John,  224. 

Allen,  the  printer,  94. 

Amelia,  Fielding's,    231,  250. 

Amesbury,  24. 

Amherst,  General,  240. 

Ana,  Goldsmith's,  171. 

Analysis  of  Beauty,  Hogarth's, 
106. 

Anecdotes,  Spence's,  31-43. 

Animalibus  Marinis,  De, 
Bohadsch's,  170. 

Animated  Nature,  Gold- 
smith's, 170,  172. 

Arabella,  Lenox's,  53-67. 

Arbuthnot,  Dr.,  29. 

Aristotle,  136. 

Arne,  Dr.,  238. 

Arquebusade  Water,  131. 

Art,  The  Quaker  of,  189- 
199. 

Art  of  Poetry,  Bysshe's,  170. 

Ashe,  Miss,  253. 

Atticus,  Pope's,  39. 

Austen,  Lady,  183,   184,    186. 


B. 

Babiole    (Lord    Chesterfield's 

house),  157. 
Balmanno  Stothards,  The,  193. 
Balmerino,  Lord,  160. 
Barber,  Francis,  94. 
Baronage,  Dugdale's,  140. 
Bartholomew  Fair,  243. 
Bartolozzi,  246. 
Bath,  Marquis  of,  38. 
Baumet,  M.  Charles,  173. 
Beard,  Mr.,  238. 
Beau  Tibbs,  Goldsmith's,  122. 
Beauclerc,  Miss,  254. 
Beauclerk,  Lady  D.,  166. 
Beaume  de  vie,  131. 
Bee,  Goldsmith's,  119,  120. 
Bensley's  Printing-office,  94. 
Bentley,  Richard  (i),  162. 

,  Richard  (2),  162,  164. 

Bergeron,  Voyages  de,  140. 
Bermingliam,  the  paper-cutter, 

158. 
Berrys,  The  Miss,  163. 
Betsey  Thottghtless,  Haywood's, 

65,  67. 
Bewick,  Thomas,  200-210. 
Bewick's   Tailpieces,   200- 

210. 
Bianco  Capello,   Vasari's,  164. 
'Bible  and  Crown,'  The,  128, 

129. 
'  Bible  and  Sun,'  The,  129. 
Bickerstaff,  Mr.  Isaac,  134. 


266 


General  Index. 


Billington,  RTrs.,  23S. 
Binns,  Miss,  13. 
Bishop  Bonner's  Ghost,  Han- 
nah More's,  163. 
Black-eyed  Susan,  Gay's,  243. 
Bland,  Mrs.,  237. 
Blount,  Martha,  42. 
Bolingbroke,  21,  42,  161. 
Bolt  Court,  No.  8,  94,  95. 
Bonbennin,  Prince,  117. 
BooA  0/ Days,  Chambers',  135. 
Book-Plates,  Lord  de  Tabley's, 

173- 
Bookseller,  An  old  Lon- 
don, 125-135. 
Boswell,  James,  59,  100,  168, 

211. 
Boydell,  .■\lderman,  113. 
Brent,  Miss,  23S. 
Bright,  Mr,.  138. 
British  Magazi7ie,  Smollett's, 

130. 
British  Museum,  223. 
British  Tourist,  Mavor's,  213. 
Brocklesby,  Dr.,  47,  50. 
Bronte,  Charlotte,  203. 
Broome,  32. 
Brown,  Tom,  258. 
Browning,  Robert,  102. 
Builditig  Houses  with  Cards, 

249. 
Bull,  Rev.  William,  180. 
Burke,  Edmund,  64,  175,  221, 

222. 
Burlington,    Richard   Earl   of, 

105. 
Bumey,  Dr.  Charles,  97. 

,  Fanny,  59,  23^,   253. 

Bussy-Rabutin,  M.,  136. 
Byron,  Ada,  68. 

C. 

Calais   Gate,  Hogarth's,  107. 
Caldecott,  Randolph,   179. 
Calprenede,  M.  de  la,  65. 
Cambridge,  Richard  Owen,  33. 


Canaletto,  219,  246. 
Canonbury  House,  130. 
Canterbury     Pilgrims,     Stot- 

hard's,  189,  191. 
Captain  Coram's  Charity, 

44-54,  84. 
Carey,  George,  250. 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  96. 
Carmontel,  M.  de,  159. 
Carnarvon,     Lord,     149,    153, 

154. 
Carter,  Mrs.,  59. 
Cassandra,  65. 
Cats,  Jacob,  204. 
Catullus,  137. 
Cellini,  Benvenuto,  165. 
Cephalic  Snuff,  131. 
Charterhouse,  Gainsborough's, 

52- 
Chaucer,  Geoffrey,  191. 
Chesterfield,    Lord,    99,    147- 

157,  161. 
Chesterfield,    The    New, 

147-157- 
Cheyne,  Dr.,  137. 
Chinese   Letters,  Goldsmith's 

116. 
Choiseul,  Duchesse  de,  159. 
Christmas    Stones,    Dickens', 

53- 

Churchill,  Charles,  98,  no,  238, 
250. 

Chute,  Mr.,  of  the  Vyne,  162. 

Cibber,  Colley,  27. 

Cicero,  152. 

Citizen  of  the  World, 
The,  1 1 5-124. 

Clelia,  65. 

Clennell,  Luke,  94,  202. 

CUopatra,  65. 

Clive,  Lord,  240. 

,  Mrs.,  163,  248. 

Cocchi,  Dr.,  of  Florence,  31. 

Cockpit,  The  (Lord  Sunder- 
land's office),  9,  10. 

Coleridge,  133,  193. 

,  Hartley,  206. 


General  Index. 


267 


Collins,  230. 

Colomb  ( Walpole's  Valet),  159. 

Colnbriad,  Cowper's,  183. 

Comte,  Le,  117. 

Connoisseur,       Colnian       and 

Thornton's.  250. 
Cooke,  Dr.,  of  Eton,  32. 
Coquecigrues,  138. 
Coram,  Captain,  44-54. 
Coram's  Charity,  Captain, 

44-54. 
Country  Inn  Yard,  Hogarth's, 

225. 
Courthope,  Mr.  W.  J.,  38. 
Covent    Garden,   Election    in, 

222. 
Covent       Garden      Journal, 

Fielding's,  62. 
Cowper,  96,  129,   176-188. 
Cowper  Illustrated,  etc.,  177. 
Cowper  on  Chesterfield,  147. 
Cowper's  Arbour,  In,  176- 

1S8. 
Cowper's  Hares,  177. 

rhymed  prose,  186-188, 

Cowper,  Theodora,  177. 
Croker,  J.  W.,  59. 
Cromwell,  Henry,  39. 
Cooper,  the  miniature  painter, 

164. 

D, 

Dance  of  Death,  Holbein's,  196. 

Dancourt,   171. 

Daniel,  Mrs.,  75. 

Daphnis  and  Chloe  of  Longus, 

41. 
Dark  Walk  at  Vauxhall,  The, 

256. 
Day  at  Strawberry  Hill, 

A,  158-166. 
Decameron,  Boccaccio's,    140. 
Dee,  Dr.  John,  165. 
Deffand,  Mad.  du,  159,  165. 
Delany,  Mrs.,  30. 
Denbies  (Tyers'  house)  260. 


Denman,  Mr.,  238. 

De      Principits       Cogiiandi, 

Gray's,  144. 
Desmoulins,  Mrs.,  94. 
Desnoyers,  151. 
Destouches,  171. 
Devil  Tavern  (Charing  Cross), 

'3- 
Devil  Tavern  (Temple  Bar),  55. 
Devil  to  Pay,  Coffey's,  24S. 
Devonshire,  Duchess  of,  236. 
Dialogue  of  Books,  Gray's,  136. 
Dickens  on   Chesterfield,  148. 
Dictionary,  Johnson's,  96. 
Dictionnaire  d' Anecdotes,  170. 

Critique,  170. 

Geniilhomme,  170, 

Litteraire,    170. 

Diderot,  171. 
Dignum,  Mr.,  238. 
Dodd,  Dr.,  152. 
Doddridge,  Philip,  69. 
Dodsley,  James,  34. 

,  Robert,  34. 

Douglas,  Home's,  116. 
Druids'  Walk  at  Vauxhall,  235, 

244,  256. 
Duck,  Stephen,  32,  33. 
Duncannon,  Lady,  236. 
Dunstan's,  St.,  96,  125. 
,  St.,  Clock,  57,  96. 

E. 
Earle,  Prof.,  102. 
Edwin,  John,  224. 
Elegy,  Gray's,  142. 
Elton,  Capt.  John,  82. 
Encyclop'cdie,  170. 
England,    A    German    in, 

211-229. 
English  Merchant,  Colman's, 

223. 
Essay  on  Tea,  Hanway's,  81, 

86  89. 
Euclid,  137. 
Euripides,  Barnes',  139. 


268 


General  Index. 


Evelina,  Miss  Burney's,  231, 

257. 
Evening,  Hogarth's,  230. 

F. 

Fable  for  Critics,  Lowell's,  186. 
'Fairy  Music'  at  Vauxhall,  245. 
Felixmarte  of  Hircania,  64. 
Female  Phaton,   Prior's,    19, 

20. 
'  Female    Quixote,    The,' 

55-67. 

Fenton,  32. 

Fielding,  Henry,  41,60,  62,64, 
67,68-78,  87,  129,  134,  156, 
226. 

,  Mrs.,  74. 

,  Sir  John,  75,  84. 

Fielding's  '  Voyage  to  Lis- 
bon,' 68-78. 

Filby,  Mr.  William,  16S. 

Finding  of  Moses,  Hayman's, 
52. 

Five  Days'  Tour,  Hogarth's, 
108. 

Flaxman,  193. 

Flitch  (j/^acowiStothard's,  119, 

Fontenelle,  171. 

Fordhook,  68,  69. 

Forster,  John,  134. 

Fossils,  Hill's,  170. 

Foundling  Hospital,  The,  44- 

54- 
Foundling  Hospital,  Wilson's, 

^52- 

Four     Times    of    the     Day, 

Hogarth's,  248. 
Fox,  Charles,  221,  222. 
Francklin,  Richard,  161. 
Frederick,  Prince  of  Wales,  247, 

260. 


Galiani,  Abb6,  194. 
Garret  in  Gough  Square, 
A,  93-103. 


Garrick,  David,  215. 

Garth,  Dr.,  55. 

Gay,  John,  20,  23,  24,  25,  26, 

27,  28,  29,  105,  213. 
German    in    England,    A, 

211-229. 
Gibbons,  Grinling,  161. 
Gil  Bias,  Sharpe's,  196. 
Gingerbread,  Giles,  131. 
Golden  Head,  Hogarth's,  107. 
Goldsmith,  Oliver,  60,  89,  90, 

115,  122,  126,  133,  137,  167- 

175-  243>  247,  250- 
Goldsmith's   chair,    desk,  and 

cane,  174. 
Goldsmith's  Illness,  Account  of, 

Hawes's,  174. 
Goldsmith's  Library,  167- 

175- 
Goldwin  Smith,  Prof.,  176. 
Good,  the  auctioneer,  167. 
Goody  Twoshoes,  131,  133. 
Gorboduc,  Sackville's,  32. 
Gordon  Riots,  The,  216. 
Gosse,  Mr.  Edmund,  145. 
Gough  Square,  95-99,  100. 
Gough  Square,  A  Garret 

IN,  93-103. 

Granby,  Lord,  240. 

Grand  walk  at  Vauxhall,  234, 

243- 
Grand  crosswalk  at  Vauxhall, 

235,  244,  24;. 
Gray  and  his  Friends,  Tovey's, 

136. 
Gray's  Library,  136-146. 
Gray,  Thomas,  129,   136,  146, 

162.  163,  211,  212. 
Greenaway,  Miss  Kate,  179, 
Greenhouse,     Cowper's,     181, 

184. 
Greenwood,  the  auctioneer,  108. 
Greig,  John,  178. 
Griffiths,  Ralph,  89,  116. 
Grigg.  The  Misses,  80,  81. 
Grosvenor,   Sir   Richard,   in, 

112. 


General  Index. 


269 


Grove  at  Vauxhall,  The,  235, 

247. 
Grub  Street,  119. 
Gunnings,  The,  67. 


H. 

Halde,  Du,  117. 
Hamilton,  Duchess  of,  162. 
Handel,  48. 
Handel,  Kneller's,  52, 

,  Koubillac's,  53,  245. 

Hanway,  Jonas,  79-92. 
Hanway's  Travels,  79-92. 
Harcourt,  Mr.,  21. 
Harriot  Stuart,  Lenox's,  55. 
Harper,  the  actor,  248. 
Hawes,  Lady,  174. 

,  Sir  Benjamin,  174. 

,  William,  174. 

Hawke,  Admiral,  240. 
Hawkins,  Sir  John,  50,  56,  57, 

95,  169. 
Hayman,  Frank,  52,  217,  240, 

248,  258. 
Haymarket  Theatre,  223. 
Hay  ward,  Abraham,  153. 
Hazlitt,  William,  71. 
Heber,  Letters  to,  Adolphus's, 

1 89. 
Henrietta,  Lenox's,  60,  124. 
Henry,  Cumberland's,  124. 
Henry      VHI.      and     Anne 

Boleyn,  Hogarth's,  248. 
Hero  and  Leander,  Loves  of, 

'35- 
Hervey,  Lady,  150,  161. 
Hesketh,  Lady,  177,  179,  186. 
Hickathrift,    Thomas,  History 

of,  134. 
High  more,  51. 
Hill,  Dr.  Bu-kbeck,  61. 

,  Robert,  32. 

Historia    Naturalis,    Pliny's, 

170. 
Hogarth,  Mrs.,  104-114. 


Hogarth,  William,  45,  51,  53, 
104-114,  166,  208,  249. 

Hogarth's  bust  by  Koubillac, 
109. 

HOGARTH'sSlGlSMUNDA,  I04- 
114. 

Hogarth's  Sisters,  109. 

Six  Servants,  109. 

Vauxhall     Ticket,  249, 

Holmes,   Dr.  Oliver  Wendell, 

lOI. 

Horace,  151. 

Hook,  James,  238. 

,  Theodore,  238. 

Houghton,  Lord,  loi. 

House  of  Commons,  222. 

Hunter,  Dr.  William,  72. 

Hussey,  Mr.,  255. 

Hyde,  Catharine,  Duchess  of 
Queensberry,  19-30. 

,  Henry,  Earl  of  Claren- 
don, 19. 

,  Jane,  Countess  of  Essex, 


I. 

Idler,  Johnson's,  97,  98,  126, 

130. 
Iliad,  Pope's,  139. 
In  Cowper's  Arbour,   176- 

188. 
Insectes,  Histoiredes,  DeGeer's, 

170. 
Irene,  Johnson's,  98,  102. 
Iris,    Verses    to,  Goldsmith's, 

171. 
Ivy  Lane  Club,  The,  55. 


J- 

Jacobsen,  Theodore,  48. 
James's  Fever   Powders,    129, 

13')  133- 
Jervas,  Charles,  22. 
Jessamy  Bride,  The,  168. 


270 


General  Index. 


John   Gilpin,  Cowper's,  1S3- 

184. 

,  Stothard's,  191. 

Johnson,  Boswell's,  212. 
Jolinson  on  Chesterfield,  147. 

,  Robert,  202. 

,  Samuel,    55,  56,  60,  61, 

62,   67,   85,  89,  90,   93-103, 

120,  126,  132,  156,  168,  233, 

250. 

,  Mrs.,  loo-ioi. 

Johnson's  Mother,  101. 

Joly,  Dr.  J.  R.,  107. 

Jones,  Griffith,  133. 

Jonson,  Ben,  55. 

Journal  of  a  Voyage  to  Lisbon, 

Fielding's,  60,  68-78. 
Journey  from  Portsmouth  to 

Kingston,  Hanway's,  8 1-86. 


K. 

Katterfelto,  216. 
Kilmarnock,  160. 
Kingsley,  Charles,  203. 

,  Henry,  207. 

Kingston,  Duke  of,  254. 
Kirgate,  Thomas,  163. 
'Kitty,'  Prior's,  19-30. 


La  Bniyere,  137,  152. 
La  Chaussee,  171. 
Lady s  Magazine,  The,  194, 
Laguerre,  Jack,  260. 
Lamb,  Charles,  71,  122,  193. 
Lambert,  George,  51,  258. 
Lang,  Mr.  Andrew,  79. 
Langton,  Bennet,  32. 
La  Rochefoucauld,  152. 
Leicester  Fields,  105. 
Lenox,  Mrs.  Charlotte,  55. 
Le  Sage,  Alain  Rene,  190. 
Leslie,  190,  203. 


Letter  from  Xo  Ho,  Walpole's, 

115. 
Lettres    Chinoises,   D'Argens', 

115. 
Persanes,  Montesquieu's, 

115,  172. 

d'une      Peruvienne, 

Grafiigny's,  115. 

Philosofhiques,  Vol- 
taire's, 115. 

Lewis,  Mary,  105,  107,  249. 
Library,  Goldsmith's,  167- 

,  Gray's,  136-146. 

Library  of  the  Arts,  Arnold's, 

198. 
Life  Guards,  Second  troop  of, 

10. 
Lilliptitian  Magazine,  131, 
Lincoln,  Henry  Clinton,  Earl 

of.  31.  34- 

Listen,  114. 

Livesay,  Richard,  108. 

Locke,  137. 

Lockhart,  1S9. 

Lockicr,  Dean,  33. 

Londina  Illustrata,  Wilkin- 
son's, 250. 

Z(jwrt'(7«,  Johnson's,  101,  T2o. 

Lovelace,  William,  Earl  of,  68. 

Lovers'  Walk  at  Vauxhall,  235, 
256. 

Lowe,  238. 

Lowth,  Bishop,  34,  35. 

Lucy,  Count,  217. 

Luttrell,  Henry,  194. 

Lutzelburger,  Hans,  196. 

M. 

Macaulay,  loi. 

Maclean,      the     Highwayman, 

161. 
Mademoiselle  Catherina,  249. 
Magliabecchi,  Antonio,  32. 
Malone,  Edmund,  35. 
Mandeville,  185. 


General  Index. 


271 


Man   in  Black,    Goldsmith's, 

121. 
Manley,  Mrs.  de  la  Rivifere,  14. 
Marcel,  151. 
March  to  Finchley,  Hogarth's, 

51,52. 
March,  Lord,  254. 
Marchmont,  42. 
Marlborough,  The  Duke  of,  15. 
Marmontel,  171. 
Mason,  William,  138. 
Mawson's  Buildings,  105. 
Memoir es  relating  to  the  Navy, 

Pepys',  44. 
Millar,  Andrew,  97. 
Milman,  Dean,  loi. 
Milton,  John,  140, 142,218,244. 

Street,  119. 

Mitford,  John,  145. 
Mitre  at  Oxford,  226. 
Monnoye,  Bernard  de  la,  171. 
Montagu,  Lady  Mary  VVortley, 

59,  74,  166. 
Montesquieu,  157. 
More,  Henry,  137. 

,  Miss  Hannah,  59. 

Moritz,  C.  P.,  128,211-229,244. 
Morland,  Sir  Samuel,  259. 
Mortimer,  245. 
Moses  brought    to    Pharaoh's 

daughter,  Hogarth's,  52. 
Murray,  John,  35. 

,  'Silver  tongued,'   157. 

Music,  Gray's  manuscript,  141. 
Mysterious  Mother,  Walpole's, 

i65. 

N. 

Nabob,  Foote's,  224. 
Nadir  Shah,  82,  83. 
Nash,  Richard,  22. 
Nazereau,  Mrs.,  17. 
Naval  History,  Hervey's,  194. 
Neal,  Betty,  255. 
New    Chesterfield,    The, 
M7-157- 


Newbery,  John,  125-135. 
Newcastle,  Duchess  of,  58. 

,  Duke  of,  34. 

Newton,  John,  181,  182,    186. 
Nichols,  Mr.  R.  C,  109. 
North  Briton  (No.  17),  106. 
Novelists'    Magazine,    Harri- 
son's, 195, 


O. 

O'Brien,  Mr.,   255. 

Odes  of  Mr,  Gray,  145. 

Odyssey,  Pope's,  31. 

Officina  Arbuteand,  The,  163. 

Old  London  Bookseller, 
An,  125-135. 

Old  Vauxhall  Gardens, 
230-261. 

Olivers,  The  (painters  in  min- 
iature), 164. 

Oliver  Twist,  Dickens',  207. 

Olney,  Cowper's  house  at,  177, 
179. 

Onslow,  Mr.  Speaker,  46. 

Orchestra  at  Vauxhall,  237,  238, 
247. 

Orford,  Lord,  255. 

Orleans,  The  Regent,  41. 

Orr,  Mrs.  Sutherland,  102. 

Ovid,  137. 


Palice  of  Honour,  Gavin 
Douglas's,  146. 

Palmer,  Jack,  224. 

Palmerin  of  England,  64. 

Pans  Sketch  Book,  Thacke- 
ray's, 54. 

Patronage  of  British  Art, 
Pye's,   193. 

Pepys,  Samuel,  44. 

Percy,  Bishop,  64. 

Peres^rine  Pickle,  Smollett's, 
248. 


2/2 


General  Index. 


Perri&re,  Madame  de  la,  144. 
Peterborough,  Lord,  69. 
Petersham,  Lady  Caroline,  253. 
Peter  IVi/iins,  Stothard's,  193. 
Pinchbeck  and  Fawkes,  243. 
Pinkerton,  164. 
Pitt,  222. 

,  Christopher,  33. 

Pleasures  of  Memory,  Rogers', 

(1802),  196. 

,  Rogers',  (1810),  196. 

Plutarch's  Lives,  139. 
Poems.  Mrs.  Lenox's,  58. 

,  Waller's,  139. 

Poissons,    Histoire    des,   Gou- 

an's,  170. 
Polly     Peackum,     Hogarth's, 

191. 
Pollnitz,  M.  de,  148. 
Polymetis,  Spence's,  32,  33. 
Pontpey  the  Little,  Coventry's, 

67. 
Pope,    Alexander,   29,  33,  38, 

105,  158,  162,  166. 
Pope,  Life  of,  Rufifhead's,  34, 

36- 
Porter,  Lucy,  98,  loi. 
Portland's  Powder,  70. 
Praed,  W.  M.,  144. 
Precieuses  Ridicules,yLo\ihit^s, 

64. 
Prince  of  Wales's  Pavilion  at 

Vauxhall,  247. 
Prior,  Matthew,  19,  114,   143. 
Prior's  'Kitty,'  19-30. 
Proposal  for  the  Poor,  Field- 
ing's, 73- 
Public  Ledger,  Newbery's,  116. 
Pulteney,  161. 

Q- 

Quadrupedibus,    Gessner    de, 

170. 
Quadrupeds,  Bewick's,  205. 
Quaker  of  Art,  The,  189- 

199. 


'  Queen  of  Portugal,'  The,  71, 

72,  76,  78. 
Queensberry,  Catherine  Hyde, 

Duchess  of,  19-30,  160. 
,    Charles,    Duke  of,    21, 

29. 
'Quixote,    The    Female,' 

55-67- 

R. 

Racine,  172. 

Rambler,    Johnson's,    61,   98, 

102. 
Ramsay,  Col.  James,  57. 
Ranelagh,  219-220. 
Raphael,  165. 
Rasselas,  Johnson's,   99,    loi, 

102. 
Ray,  the  Naturalist,  137. 
Rebellion,  Clarendon's,  140. 
Recueil  d^ Anecdotes,  1 70. 
Retz,  Cardinal  de,  152. 
Reiz,  Memoirs  of  the  Cardinal 

de,  172. 
Reynolds,   97,   168,   169,    175, 

250. 

,  Miss,  97. 

Richardson,  Samuel,  59,  60,  64, 

67,  99. 

,  the  Artist,  158,  165. 

Richmond,  Duchess  of,  162. 

Rigby,  221. 

Ring  in  Hyde  Park,  The,  11. 

Robinson,  Mrs.  (Perdita),  236. 

Rockingham,  Lady,  58. 

Rodney,  Admiral,  221. 

Rogers,  145,  196. 

Rolle,  Mr..  34. 

Roman     Comique,     Scarron's, 

173- 
Romney,  177. 

Rose,  Rt.  Hon.  George,  58. 
Rotunda  at  Vauxhall,  219,  239, 

240,  246. 

at  Ranelagh,  219. 

Roubillac,  97,  217. 


General  Index. 


273 


Rowlandson,  236. 
Runciman,  Alexander,  108. 
Rural  Downs  at  Vauxhall,  244. 
Ruskin,  Mr.,  203,  205. 


'  Sacharissa,'  26. 

Sadler's  Wells,  230. 

Sainte  Beuve,  C.  A.,  153. 

Si.  Georges  Hospital,  Wil- 
son's, 52. 

Schaub,  Lady,  143. 

,  Sir  Luke,  iii. 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  30,  190. 

Scudery,  Madlle.,  65. 

Selwyn,  G.  A.,  162. 

Sevigne,  Madame  de,  136,  159, 
165. 

Shakespeare  Illustrated, 

Lenox's,  58,  59. 

Shenstone,  William,  33. 

Shrimp  Girl,  Hogarth's,  106. 

Sigisrmmda,  Furini's,  iii. 

SiGisMUNDA,  Hogarth's, 
104-114. 

Singer,  S.  W.,  35,  36. 

Sister,  Lenox's,  60. 

Smart,  Christopher,  127. 

Smetham,  James,  199. 

Smith,  J.  T.,  246. 

Solo  (a  carriage),  91. 

South  walk  at  Vauxhall,  235, 
245. 

Southey,  Robert,  132. 

Sparre,  Miss,  254. 

Speed,    Miss    Henrietta  Jane, 

143.  144- 
Spence,  Rev.  Joseph,  31-43. 
Spence's  Anecdotes,  31-43. 
Spring  Gardens,  Sketch  of  the, 

248. 
Standly,  H.  P.,  107. 
Stanhope,  Arthur,  152. 

,  Mrs.  Eugenia,  149. 

,  Philip  (i),  150,  152. 

,  Philip  (2),  152,  155,  156. 


Stationers  Company's  School, 

94. 
Steele,  9-18,  55,  80,  117. 

,  Elizabeth,  17. 

,  Eugene,  17. 

,  Mrs.,  12,  13,  14,  15. 

Steele's    Otaracter    (Toby's), 

134- 
Steele's  Letters,  9-18. 
Steevens,  George,  108. 
Stonehewer,  138. 
Storer,  James,  178. 
Stothard,  Bust  of,  197. 

,  Thomas,  94,  189-199. 

Strahan,  William,  55. 
Strawberry  Hill,  A  Day 

AT,   158-166. 

Strawberry    Hill    Press,    The, 

163. 
Sublime    and  Beautiful, 

Burke's,  116. 
Sully's  Memoirs,  Lenox's,  58. 
Summer  House,Cowper's,i79- 

180. 
Supper  Boxes  at  Vauxhall,  247. 
Swift,  15,  21,  23,  24,  25,  26, 

27,  29.  38,  42,  55.  137- 
Systema    Natures,    Linnaeus  , 
141. 


Tabley,  Lord  de,  173. 
Tailpieces,  Bewick's,  200- 

210. 
Tales     of    a     Grandfather, 

Scott's,  189. 
Tar  Water,  Berkeley's,  70. 
Temple  of  Comus  at  Vauxhall, 

241. 
Tender  Husband,  Steele's,  64. 
Tennyson,  144. 
Thackeray,  W.  M.,  23,  53, 134. 

on  Chesterfield,  148. 

Thedtre  des  Grecs,  Brumoy's, 


18 


59- 
Thompson,  the  Quack,  41. 


274 


General  Index, 


Thomson,  James,  32. 

,  Master  John,  81. 

,  Mr.  Hugh,  174. 

Thornhill,  Lady,  109. 

,  Sir  James,  109. 

Thornycroft,  Mr.  Hamo,  145. 

Thrale,  Mrs.,  59,  132. 

Throckmortons,  The,  178. 

Tiltyard,  The,  10. 

Times,  Hogarth's,  112. 

Tommy  Trip,  131. 

Tonton  (Walpole's  Dog),  159. 

Totir  to  the  Hebrides,  Bos- 
well's,  212, 

Townshend,  Lady,  160. 

Tradesman,  The  Eighteenth 
Century,  125. 

Travels,  Hanvvay's,  79-92. 

Travels  in  Italy,  Moritz"s,  228. 

Persia,  Hanway's,  82. 

Traveller,  Goldsmith's,  120. 

Trebeck,  Rev.  James,  104. 

Tregaskis,  Mr.  James,  107. 

Tristram  Shandy,  119,  197. 

Trivia,  Gay's,  84. 

Turner,  J.  W.  M.,  194. 

Tyers,jonathan,  259-261. 

,  Tom,  261. 


U. 

Umbrella,  Use  of  the,  84. 
UnderhJU,  John,  35. 
Universal     Chronicle,     New- 

bery's,  130. 
Unwin,  Mr.,  181,  185. 

,  Mrs.,  183. 

Uzanne,  M.  Octave,  79. 


V. 

Vane,  Anne,  248. 
— — ,  Harry,  256. 
Vanity    of   Human 
Johnson's,  98,  102. 


Wishes, 


Vanity  Fair,  Thackeray's,  54. 

Vauxhall,  123,  218,  230-261. 

Vauxhall  Gardens,  Old, 
230-261. 

Vauxhall  Stairs,  233. 

Veal,  Captain  Richard,  76,  77. 

Vernon,  Mr.,  238. 

Vicar  of  IVaiefield,  Gold- 
smith's, 102,  126,  130,  174. 

Vincent,  Mrs.,  238. 

Virgil,  137. 

Virgil,  Dryden's,  139. 

Voiture,  Vincent  de,  25,  171. 

Voltaire,  153,  171. 

Voyages,  Pinkerton's,  213. 

'Voyage  to  Lisbon,'  Field- 
ing's, 68-78. 


W. 

Wale,  S.,  236. 

Walpole,   Horace,  21,  22,  29, 
3'.  32i33.  73.  105.  IIS.  "6, 

129,    141,    158-166,  2X1,    216, 
231,  253- 

Walpole's  Nieces,  164. 
Walpole  of  Wolterton,   Lord, 

47- 
IVal/oliana,  Pinkerton's,  158, 

212,  213. 
Wapping  Landlady,  The,2^cj. 
Warburton,   William,    34,  36, 

42. 
Ward,  Dr.,  41. 
Warton,  Joseph,  25,  34,  97. 
Waterloo    Shield,    Stothard's, 

192. 
Waterworks  at  Vauxhall,  242. 
Weichsell,  Mrs.,  236,  23S. 
Wendeborn,  Rev.  Mr.,  217. 
West,  Benjmin,  53. 
Westminster  Hall,  220. 
Weston,    Cowper's  house   at, 

179- 
Whitehed,  Mr.,  254. 
Wilderness  at  Vauxhall,  244. 


General  Index. 


275 


Wilkes,  John,  53,  106,  107, 
112. 

William  the  Third,  165. 

Wilson,  the  Olney  barber,  184. 

Wtfs  Magazine,  252. 

Wives  Metamorphosed,  Cof- 
fey's, 249. 

Wolsey,  165. 

Wordsworth,  214. 


World,    Citizen    of   the, 
115-124. 

Wotton,  Sir  Henry,  150. 
Wright,  Mr.  Tliomas,  183. 
Wycherley,  William,  37,  38. 


Young,  Edward,  33. 


^HJ\ 


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